


While We Were Dead

by Unquiet_Grave



Series: The Outsider [3]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Best Doggo survived Armageddon and all he got was belly rubs, Character Development, Crooked Cops, Emotional Roller Coaster, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Female Anti-Hero, Flashbacks, Gang Violence, Mentions of Deputy/John, Mutual Pining, Past Character Death, Philosophical Metaphors, Poorly-disguised True Detective References, Religious Fanaticism, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Soulmates, This is my attempt at humanizing Joseph, irreverent humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-06-08 07:32:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 70,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15238485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unquiet_Grave/pseuds/Unquiet_Grave
Summary: She always thought the bunker would be their tomb. He always saw it as a kiln, a vessel built to transform them.They went underground as enemies, and emerged as something else. But this is not the story of after.This is what happened, while they were inside.





	1. My Name is Ava

**Author's Note:**

> Third and final entry in my 'Outsider' series. This is my take on the resist ending, and my way of dealing with all the implications the game throws at you. We'll see how the Deputy handles it. I think she's got this...sorta. She's always been an improv-as-she-goes kinda gal.
> 
> Feedback and critique welcome!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past and present Deputies deal with two very different situations. Present-day Dep and Joseph confront each other for the first time since the bombs dropped. Joseph finally has a name to call his enemy by.

Rust: I tell you, Marty, I've been up in that room looking out those windows every night here and just thinking...It's just one story. The oldest.

Marty: What's that?

Rust: Light versus dark.

Marty: Well, I know we ain't in Alaska, but...appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.

Rust: Yeah. You're right about that.

***  
  
Marty: You want to go back, get clothes or anything?

Rust: No, anything I left back there, I don't need. You know, you're looking at it wrong, the...sky thing.

Marty: How is that?

Rust: Well, once, there was only dark.

If you ask me, the light's winning.

-"Form and Void", True Detective, Season One

* * *

_"Would you?"_

_The Deputy looked up from her phone screen, beads of sweat forming on her olive-toned brow. It must have been 100 degrees in the oven that was their unmarked police van, presently idling in an industrial section of Los Angeles. Through the crosshatched window in the back, she could see heat waves rippling from the cracks in the pavement, as if hell itself were escaping. The AC had quit on them long ago, but the retired van's numbers were scrubbed, and their department couldn't track it if they had to ditch it last-minute._

_"Yo." Deputy Jason Ramirez called to her from across her seat, his lean, brown arms folded against his bulletproof vest._

_"Would I what?" she asked, wiping her forehead with the back of her glove. She clicked her phone screen off. The image of a smiling woman, bearing a younger resemblance the Deputy, faded to black._

_Used to her distractions, Ramirez rolled his dark eyes, his buzzed hair sparkling with perspiration._

_"Would you kill yourself?" he asked. "If you were trapped in one of those prepper bunkers?"_

Feels like I'm trapped in one now _, she thought bitterly. The Deputy put her phone away, unscrewing the cap to a bottle of water, sipping from it. They had been discussing end-of-the-world scenarios, to stave off the boredom of their stakeout. The van was parked outside an abandoned brick warehouse, recently taken up by drug dealers as a stash house. They were awaiting their supplier: the drug dealer who helped them rob other drug dealers._

_"I guess it depends."_

_"On what?"_

_The Deputy shuddered, thinking of more than a few people that might drive her to take a bullet. Namely, her late father, whose phantom still managed to haunt her, even in fantasy scenarios._

_"On who I was stuck with."_

_**_

"Take shelter immediately. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill."

The Deputy lifts her head to the sound of a PA announcer, back from what felt like the sleep of ages. Her brain doesn't want to reboot, and she comes back online slowly, bit by bit. She remembers bright, unnatural light in the sky. Towering mushroom clouds. Heat. Wind, the kind that hits you so hard, you feel it in your breast, as if the Hand of God were shaking you. A wild car ride, her fingers white-knuckling a steering wheel that felt like it would melt at any second. Someone's high-pitched prayers, pleading to God to save them. Her inner monologue, wishing they'd shut the hell up and let her drive...

A deer, its body engulfed in flames, running across the road, like something out of a movie.

Only it wasn't a movie. It was real. The mushroom clouds had been real.

"Oh my God," she whimpers under her breath. Her handcuffed wrists sag against the bed frame. She can do nothing but repeat the same phrase, over and over, the longest prayer that's ever come out of her mouth: "Oh my God. Oh God!"

She's remembering more. A tree falling. Tires screeching, broken glass. Flames eating at the truck. The faces of her comrades, the police, her friends, dead. All dead. Her stunned mind and body telling her she's dead, too.

But then a pair of hands seized her, strong and careful. They pulled her from her would-be tomb, carrying her into another. Into the bunker. Dutch's bunker.

Speaking of Dutch, he's on the floor in front of her. Dead, by the looks of it.

"Oh my God," she groans one final time.

Turning slowly to face her from across the room, is the man she's spent months trying to kill. He stands in front of a giant Eden's Gate flag, his hands held at his shirtless sides. Cool, calm eyes regard her from beneath a pair of yellow Jim Jones shades.

A quaint smile plays across his lips: the smile of a man who has laid his cards out and flashed the winning hand.

The Deputy presses her face into the cool, hard metal of the bed frame. She can't give voice to her despair. There are no words. All that leaves her lips is a soft moan, like a whimper. At that sound, Joseph's long legs bend slightly as he walks closer to her.  

_Ramirez beamed, showing slightly crooked but big, white teeth. It was a smile that had charmed many_ abuelas _into gushing about their grandchildren, spilling their secrets to him. Looking back, it was his charm, his intimate knowledge of the Latin-American community, that had made their scam possible in the first place. She wasn't sure if a devil in disguise was worse than looking one in the eye, dead-on._

_"Who would you wanna be stuck with?" Ramirez laughed, putting his hands behind his head. "And don't say me."_

_Dep cringed._

_"Wasn't plannin to."_

_A grim question if she ever heard one, though she supposed it wasn't so different from jail, the place every cop, including her, dreaded going to. She thought about it, having watched_ Doomsday Preppers _a few times, clinking beers with the rest of the squad that summer. They had drank every time someone said 'when shit hits the fan' and 'can't hurt to be too prepared'._

_She spoke at last, careful to stifle her Appalachian accent, which always tried to spring up like a weed. "I guess one of my siblings, if you held a gun to my head. Or maybe Buddha."_

_"What about Jesus?"_

_She sat back and smirked. "Had too many dudes named Jesus spit on me, hit me, stab me."_

_Ramirez chuckled and shook his head. "Ain't that the truth. Know who I'd wanna be with?"_

_"Shakira. Jennifer Lopez. Both of them."_

_"Fuckin A!"_

_Dep spat a jet of water by his boots, in jest. "You're so predictable, Jason."_

_"Hey, just being honest. Gotta repopulate the earth and all that good shit."_

_Her partner shrugged his wide shoulders. He was lean, but fast, having played shortstop all through high school and the academy. He ran a youth baseball league for disadvantaged kids and teens in his spare time. One of them, a teenager named Emilio Rodriguez, was their top informant._

_Ramirez, his mind always on money and making more of it, was the best at sniffing out prime candidates for their scheme._

_They each fell silent, left to their own thoughts on the matter. The apocalypse was a scenario the unimaginative Deputy couldn't entertain. She was a face-forward sort of woman, without much of a fantasy life. Religion wise, she was about as full of the holy spirit as a flat tire on the side of the road. Her childhood home, the rugged, sometimes desolate mountains of West Virginia, simply wouldn't let her. If her father or uncles had caught her daydreaming, she was more likely to get a cuff to the head, rather than praise and affection. There wasn't enough time, enough food, enough chores to split up between her and her three siblings—two older brothers and a little sister._

_Deputy clicked her phone screen back on. The image of the young woman lit up. Long brown hair, lighter than the Deputy's dark brown, framed a mousy face alight with mischievous eyes, warmed by a kind smile. Her little sister, Emma-Lee, had been the imaginative one. That wasn't to say she was a sensitive child, or even vulnerable. She is...was...just as hardheaded as all her kin. So, when the Deputy had approached her, young woman to obstinate teenager, about the needle she'd found in her bag, Emma-Lee had met the Deputy's accusations with a verbal headbutt of her own._

I miss the arguments, even. Christ _, Deputy thought. She shut her phone off when she realized Jason was staring at her._ Aw, shit. Here comes the pity party.

_Ramirez nodded past the wall of the van, toward the warehouse. "You sure you're good?"_

No. My sister's dead. I don't know how I should feel. _Deputy's hazel eyes hardened._

_"Why wouldn't I be?"_

_"All that shit with your sister. The drugs. You know who her suppliers were. They weren't directly responsible, but if you follow the chain of command..."_

_Anger in her eyes now. Two thick, black, plucked eyebrows came together in a glare that Ramirez liked and simultaneously feared. Usually it meant a trashcan was about to go flying, or a wall was about to get a fresh hole punched into it._

_"You implyin I've lost my taste?"_

_Jason stared back at her, thin-lipped. "Maybe not the taste. Just your appetite. Worried you might bite into something you aren't ready to digest yet."_

_Deputy cracked her neck, solemn, and looked out the window. A car flashed in the unforgiving sunlight. Their supplier approaching, there to show them where the stash of heroine was. It was unusual for him to join them, and looking back, she would see it as the first omen that something royally fucked up was about to happen. The plan was to bust the operation in the warehouse, pretend to seize it for their department, and keep a portion of the drugs, to be sold back to the supplier at a discounted rate. He would then redistribute it, to the streets, and make himself a neat little profit. Some of those white vials and baggies might make their way to the gentrified, artsy district where Emma had lived._

_And died, in the bathroom of a junkie house on the edge of the neighborhood. Deputy put her phone away in the pocket of her blue jeans. The heels of her black boots pressed into the dirty floor of the old van._

_"_ No hay bronca _, my friend," she said finally._ Don't worry about it.

_Ramirez winced at her Spanish. He'd tried to teach her some, but she had a shit memory, and a tin ear for other languages._

_"Yeah, yeah. Leave the_  Español _to me,_ campesina."

_Deputy stirred at her nickname, which meant 'peasant' or 'bumpkin'. She'd spend more of her life in LA than she had in West Virginia, but Californians loved to remind her that she would always, at heart, be an outsider there._

_"Yo." Their driver, Deputy Chris Reid, turned around in his seat suddenly. He'd been staring out the window with binoculars, ignoring their conversation for the past hour and a half. She and Ramirez both turned to face him._

_"He's coming," was all the driver said._

Joseph was coming toward her. Deputy has no idea what will happen next, but she's willing to bet he didn't drag her through an apocalypse just to murder her. Or so she hopes.  _Then again, he is a mite insane._

"You know what this means?" he asks, in a voice entirely too calm for having just survived a nuclear attack. Without waiting for her answer, he says, "It means the politicians have been silenced. It means the corporations have been erased."

He raises his hands to the metal ceiling. "It means the world has been cleansed by God's righteous fire."

He lowers them, staring down at her. His blue eyes shine wildly in sockets darkened by grit and smoke. Those eyes fill her vision as he leans face-to-face with her.

"It means I was right," he whispers.

Deputy doesn't cringe away from him, nor does she make a peep, even though he's close enough for her to feel his warm breath against her nose, her lips. Still stunned, the idea of cracking him in the forehead with her own doesn't seem wise. She is forced to listen to the rest of his victory speech, or whatever this is.

_What is it with the Seeds and tyin me down?_ she thinks, exasperated.  _Like I got a sign on my back or somethin._

Joseph backs away, still close enough for the Deputy to kick him, he knows. She's in no shape to fight, and he isn't worried about that, anyway. Background noise. The main crescendo in his mind right now is fury, which he desperately tries to restrain, like a mad dog. She knows it too, can see it in the way he stares at her, incredulous. Reverent, in the face of a tidal wave of destruction that has left him with almost nothing.

_Almost._

"The collapse has come. The world as we know it is over," he muses, sitting only feet from Dutch's corpse. The woman's eyes flick to Dutch, back to him, narrowing in her hatred. No sarcastic rebuttals for him this time! No hissing and spitting like a mountain lion, followed by a gunfight that would leave more of his precious followers (and family) dead. He pushes down his building rage. Wrath was HER sin, he reminded himself. John had told him so.

_John..._

"I waited so long." He stares past the ceiling, toward heaven. "I waited so long for the prophecy that God whispered in my ear to be fulfilled."

_Fuck my life,_  Deputy thinks, watching an invisible man speak in Joseph's ear. If she wasn't awake earlier, she sure as shit is now. Her eyes nearly bulge from her head. _He's nuts. Crazier'n a shit-house rat, and I'm stuck in here with him. Ain't this a bitch. Where's Shakira when you need her?_

Realizations struck Joseph, one at a time, ringing funereal notes in his heart. He will never hear Faith's laugh again. Never stay up late, sitting in a lawn chair next to John at his ranch, discussing theology until three in the morning. He will never share a meal of fresh game with Jacob again.

"I prepared my family for this moment. And you TOOK them from me."

Without realizing it, his hand reaches out and finds the woman's soft throat. She struggles against him, back stiffening, but doesn't make a peep. John once told him she was the most stubborn woman he'd ever met. Not long after that, she'd shot down his plane and hunted him in the woods outside his bunker. They found the body leaning against a cult sign by the road, like a lone hitchhiker that had given up.

"I should KILL you for what you've done," Joseph growls. The idea seems grander by the minute. Righteous anger tightens his grip, and her eyes bolt to his in panic.

_He's gonna let go,_ Deputy tells herself, as her body needs, DEMANDS for air. Her head starts to pound. His fingers, with a little more pressure, can crush her windpipe.  _Any minute now. The air's gonna come. He doesn't have the balls._

But Joseph doesn't let go. Instead he leans in, his teeth gnashing like a wolf's. So much. She had taken so much from him! All she had to do was BELIEVE. Listen to that Sheriff, even. But she listened to no one. She would answer to no one for her crimes.

No one, save him.

_"No one followed you?" Ramirez asked from the crack in the back door._

_He opened it wider to let in their supplier. He climbed inside, his long, skinny limbs offset by his baggy clothing. Deputy regarded the sixteen-year-old, with his red bandana and corn rows, wearing nothing but a wife beater, a gold chain, jean shorts, and sneakers with white socks pulled all the way up his ankles. He didn't advertise his newfound wealth much, but that would change following this bust. They were set to net almost three times would they would ordinarily make—if they pulled it off._

_Manuel crouched down and said, in a good-natured voice, "Relax,_ chota. _No one saw me._ Guera, _you need some water? You look like you're about to melt and leave nothin but your clothes on the floor."_

_At the notion of her clothes coming off, he grinned at her. Deputy almost grinned back. He had a contagious smile. It was one of many things she found admirable about the young, industrious dealer, who thought of himself more as a businessman at times. One had to respect his enthusiasm._

_"Cool it, Manuel," the Deputy warned lightly. The heat was making her crankier than usual, and her shoulder-length, brown-and-gold streaked hair clung to her head with the van's humidity._

_Manuel Elizondo scratched at his bandana, then pinched his nose shut. "Damn, cuz. It smells like_ caca  _in here. What do you police do all afternoon, besides hot-box this_ _crackhead van_ _with your funk?"_

_"Smells better than you, pothead," Ramirez said, without much malice. He checked his gun once on his hip and shut the van doors, keeping them open a hair, listening for anything suspicious._

_Manuel's nostrils flared, and he was about to fire back a reply, but the Deputy was sick of waiting. She interrupted him._

_"We let you come out here, 'spite our protocol."_

_He laughed at that (and at the Dep's accent, which sounded almost alien to him). Protocol was out the window when you were making illegal deals with cops._

_"Now tell us why," she finished, giving his bony shoulder a shove. She saw a bit of her older brother, Vincent, in him as well. Vinnie had been industrious, once, a better schemer than her, before the police shot him in the back during a robbery. With her graduating the Academy only a month before, it had made for an awkward dinner conversation with her family, to say the least.  
_

_Her father had ripped her badge from her shirt, which she'd worn proudly to the funeral. Dep had thrown her plate at the wall and stormed out to the old play set, where she and Vinnie and Emma-Lee had make-believed they were orphans-in-the-woods or the Swiss Family Robinson. She was LAPD, she'd told herself, crying on a busted swing, remembering how Vinnie had used to try and push her high enough to fling her to the roof. What did her crook, moon-shining father know? She was a woman of the law. A force for good..._

_Now, she was about to help a drug dealer steal heroine from other dealers. Funny how shit changed._

_"Keep your panties on, lady." Manuel took out a folded piece of paper, where a crude outline of the building was drawn. "It's like this..."_

_He explained the layout of the place. It was guarded by men who would only open the doors for him. Usually they could flash a fake warrant, or break in, even coordinate a big bust with other units, but this was cartel territory they were treading in. Manuel was there to make sure they didn't step on a landmine._

_"We good to go?" Reid, the driver, asked. He held a mug to his lips that read '_ _BIG HUG MUG'._

_Deputy took a deep breath. They'd done this dozens of times. To say she was afraid, would be an overstatement. Her lack of imagination didn't allow for fear until it had her in its teeth, and she hadn't allowed herself to think about their task much, other than the logistics. Speaking of, was her gun loaded?_

_She checked the gun on her hip and drew it. Ramirez took his service weapon out as well._

_"Aw, hell yeah," Manuel said, nodding. "Let's fuck shit up."  
_

_"Shh. This is gonna go cool and collected," Ramirez reminded him, in a low voice. He eased one of the doors open. "I don't wanna be here any longer than I have to. These people have cartel connections."_

_"So's every other Latin dealer in LA," Deputy said. "Where d'you think the drugs come from? The fairy-godmother?"_

_Manuel chuckled, but Ramirez shook his head._

_"Not like these guys. I, er, looked them up."_

_"And you wait til now to tell me?" she huffed, more annoyed than scared._

_"You two argue like an old married couple. We doin this?" Manuel asked, impatient. He scratched at his bandana again, something the Deputy would later realize that was her second omen. Manuel never had twitchy hands. He always kept them in his pockets or at his sides._

_With driver Reid's go-ahead, the three of them exited the van, one at a time, Ramirez taking the lead, his weapon drawn. Manuel held up a finger gun and pretended to aim with them. This was all a game to him. All of life was a game, his to win, if he played his cards right. He didn't believe in fate, he'd told her once. He simply knew what he was meant to be._

_They soon stood before the bolted double-doors to the warehouse. The moment they'd trained their guns on the two guards, they'd opened up the doors for them. Manuel went inside to take care of the initial negotiations._

_With a weird sense of calm, Deputy let the sun beat down on her hot back as she waited for Manuel to emerge from the shadows of the warehouse. For a tense minute, nothing happened. Then, he poked his head out, and waved them inside, as if inviting them into his grandmother's house for tea and crumpets._

_Things were going too smoothly, but there was no stopping it now. Lowering her weapon a tad, Dep glanced at Ramirez. He nodded, and motioned with his weapon for the guards to go first. They took their first steps into the big, empty building, with its busted windows and crumbling roof._

_It would be the last door Ramirez would ever walk through._

His face is the last thing she'll ever see. Not an ugly face, when it isn't contorted with rage and crazy, and when she isn't looking at it through the star-spangled haze of her imminent strangulation. 

Her vision tunnels. His hand is unrelenting, a brutal clamp on her windpipe. She'd judged him wrong. These are her final moments, scuffing the floor with her boot heels as her eyes throb and her lungs scream. Only one thing bubbles to her mind, a last act of desperation or last defiance, she isn't sure which. 

"...Ava!" she manages to choke out. She isn't sure if he's heard her, as it sounded more like a gurgle than her own name.

But Joseph does hear it. Up until now, he's thought of her only as 'the Deputy', or sometimes 'Rook'. His followers had conjured all sorts of nicknames for her, most of them demeaning.

He looks down, some of the vitriol inside him burning off. On his taught forearm, connected to the same hand he's slowly killing this hateful woman with, the tattoo of his wife catches his eye. She's peeking eternally from behind the bliss flowers, more than a little of the last Faith in her features. Her own inked eye seems to stare back up at him, as if to say:  _I know. I see you. This is not the man of God that I loved._

All the strength leaves his arm, and he lets go.

Air rushes inside, and the Deputy sags into the wall, breathing as if through a straw. Tears stream down her face, but she isn't crying. A low-burning hatred, the desire to beat this man at his own game and escape, is all that burns inside her.

"What did you say?" he asks, ignoring her wet rasps. He already knows, but he wants to be sure.

"My name's...Ava," she pants, and tries to sit up, but fails. She shuts her eyes, gasping, "Ava Morandi. Thought...I should tell you...before you killed me."

_"Ava,"_ he repeats, understanding, looking up at the ceiling again, with a strange tilt of his mouth that isn't quite a smile. "Derived from Eve..."

Dep fights the urge to vomit, grateful her bowels were empty when he'd dragged her into the bunker.

"Yeah, I guess," she croaks, not catching his drift.

Joseph asks thoughtfully, "And what does Morandi mean? It's Italian, isn't it?"

"...Steadfast."

_More like stubborn,_  he thinks.He grunts his amusement, unable to laugh. He isn't sure if he'll ever laugh again.

He muses, "Ava...you're all I have left now. You're my family."

_I'm his WHAT now?_ She bolts upright, despite herself. A wave of dizziness threatens to knock her out again.  _The fuck did he just say?!_

With dead-certainty, he finishes: "And when the world is ready to be borne anew, we will step into the light. I am your Father and you are my child. And together, we will march to Eden's Gate."

With those words, watching him lean back, sure of himself and his prophecy, Ava can't take it. She lets her head sag against her chest and slips into nothingness.

Joseph observes this with nothing more than a calm look. Seconds ago, his heart rate had been drumming like a _Slayer_ album, the one he'd used to play backwards and listen to for hidden messages.

He wonders, if he played his life backwards, and hers, what sort of messages would await him.


	2. Priorities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Salvation vs. Survival. Deputy Ava has upset Joseph over something, and he punishes her. A familiar face disrupts things. The standoff leads to Joseph reliving the worst day of his life.

Babe, baby, baby, I'm gonna leave you.  
I said baby, you know I'm gonna leave you.  
I'll leave you when the summertime  
Leave you when the summer comes a rollin'  
Leave you when the summer comes along.

-"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You', Led Zeppelin

* * *

Looking back, running her mouth so shortly after he'd saved her life hadn't been the smartest move. But Ava isn't the smartest woman. Practical, shrewd, observant, even considerate, but not smart. She is, after all, just a bully. A cop who bullied the other bullies most of her life, but sometimes the wrong people fell into her cross-hairs. Sometimes, she took cheap shots, and now had been one of those times.

The consequences are interesting, to say the least.

Deputy Ava takes a stuttering, quick breath before her head's back underwater. God knows how much water they would have left to ride out the end of the world, but that doesn't stop Joseph from dunking her head like a teabag into the rec-room fish tank, over and over.

 _I've upgraded from chokin, to drownin,_ she thinks.  _If I don't choke on a guppy first, that is._

She comes dangerously close to sucking one of the tiny fish down her throat. They dart away from her head every time he dunks her, a few of them flopping around on the floor. She would have felt sorry for them, outside her current situation.

_Wasn't water John's MO? I see where he got it from._

Any emotions she might have at the memory of John fly out the proverbial window, as her body twists and tightens in her need for air. She tries her hardest not to choke, or suck down water, but some shoots up her nose anyway, and she coughs. Swallowing foul-tasting water, she panics, writhing against the hard lip of the tank, which digs into the WRATH tattoo on her chest. Her shirt and the front of her pants are soaked through. Her legs flail, and her boots scrape frantic patterns into the floor of the rec-room. Perhaps Joseph is out to redecorate every surface in the bunker with her scuff marks. 

He has Ava's wrists cuffed behind her. His hand is tangled up in her dark hair, the other grips the edge of the rubber tank liner, tight enough to leave nail gouges in it. A pool of water has gathered at his shoes, splashing his jeans and his bare chest. He pays no more mind to being wet than the fish do.

Just as her body starts to wilt and sag, with a twitch of his muscles, he rips her back up. Ava's face is coated in a slimy sheen. Her mouth opens, gasping for air, her eyes shut. As soon as she senses she's above water, she opens them. Glares at him, balefully, as she always has, usually from above the sight of a gun. Her eyes are hazel, mostly brown, hardly any green lives therein. Her eyebrows detract from her irises: two heavy, handsome, black lines that exaggerate every expression, turning a simple annoyed look into a burning, glowering bolt of contempt. 

"I'm sorry, all right?" she barks, but it's a weak bark. "I didn't mean it!"

Joseph considers her. The only signs he's angry are the nail gouges, the tight grip on the knot of her hair. His face is contemplative. Stolid. His eyes bore into hers, as they always have since she crashed out of the skies into Hope County. Drops of water slither down his aviators.

"I don't believe you," is all he says, before he pushes her back under.

"Mmmph!" She takes a small, shallow breath, having wasted too much of it gabbing. This time, she doesn't move. She's getting tired. Her hair floats in the water with the seaweed. A fish tickles her cheek, curious.  Time passes, minute by minute. The florescent lights above them stutter once or twice. There's a twitch in her neck first, as her body involuntarily tries to move.

Before long, the fish scatter, and she's fighting against him again, bubbles flying from her screaming mouth.

He has half a mind to let her drown. After the awful things she said, the barbs she shot into him, she deserves nothing less. He would question until the end of his days why God put such an awful, obstinate, snake of a woman in his care. As he looks down at her, her black t-shirt bunching above her waist, the hem of her jeans sagging down, revealing a tramp-stamp of a jack rabbit, he almost rolls his clear, blue eyes.

_Why me?_

The barbs release their poison. The toxic memories threaten to overwhelm him, putting him on autopilot, keeping his arms locked into place as the woman drowns. He takes a deep breath for her. Steadies himself, his legs locked into place. Her ass brushes against his crotch once in her wriggling, but even though he's got 'LUST' scarred twice into his body, he feels not one iota of desire for her. Only disgust.

 _God has a plan,_ a gentle voice coaxes. Joseph tilts his head slightly to the right, as if listening. It isn't the voice of God, but softer, more feminine. A ghost's voice.  _Don't intervene. Remember the last time you ignored His wishes?_

Ava's head leaves the water at last. She droops against the inside of the tank, retching and coughing into it. She can't see, even when she opens her eyes. Too much water, too much blood pooling, her sclera will be inflamed and red for days.

"Do you-" Joseph starts, but he's interrupted.

By growling. From the entrance to the rec-room. Low, loud, and threatening. He lets go of Ava and snatches up the handgun on the end of the table.

A shrill bark follows, a yip of recognition.

"B-Boomer?" she stammers. She lifts her head. She can barely see, but Joseph's broad back and the enormous cross tattoo block her view.

"I don't know how you got in here," he says, grim. "But we can't have another mouth to feed."

His arm straightens in front of him, and the handgun clicks.

"NO!"

Unsure of how she finds the strength, she edges around the table and flies between Joseph and his target. Throwing herself to the floor in the door frame, she hears a set of hard nails clink as whatever's behind her backs up. Could be just a stray dog, frightened out of its mind by the bombs, somehow slipping past Joseph as he'd been carrying her inside.

Perhaps Dutch adopted a dog, sure. That was probably it.

But then a salt-and-pepper snout rests on her shoulder, and a tongue licks her neck once, leaving a strip of drool.

"Boomer!"

She all but sobs the name. She cranes her neck to look back at him, and for a moment all the strife leaves her face, and she smiles. The Aussie cattle-shepherd mix steps out of the shadows, hackles raised. He woofs loudly at Joseph, and she can feel the cry in her own ribs.

"Move aside," he orders her. The black hole of the gun stares them both down.

"Leave him be!" Ava leans to and fro, each time Boomer tries to get in front of her. She mutters low, soft commands for him to stay back, and to the credit of his dead owners, he listens.

"I won't ask again."

But Ava ignores the gun, ignores him. She digs her face into the thick, smelly fur of Boomer's neck instead. His fur smells worse than normal, and that's saying something. How many nights, hunkered down by a tiny campfire, had she spent with him at her side? How many times had she and Grace sent him on scouting missions, the two humans pretending not to be worried about some dumb dog, only to jump with joy and fawn over him like a celebrity when he returned at the end of the battle? He may have reeked of soot, wet dog, and worse, but just then, to Ava, he smelled like hope.

"My God." Her words are muffled by his fur. "How'd you get here, you stupid dog? How'd you survive, huh?"

Boomer sits in response, patiently letting his human nuzzle him. He's favoring his right paw, the left held in the air, the brindle fur coated in dark, red blood.

At the sight of her crying into the dog's neck, the gun dips in Joseph's grip. The hardness leaves his face, softening his mouth, his eyes. He keeps the gun trained on the floor space just by her boots, remembering...

_His wife had to sit on the floor to lace her boots, and it made him laugh._

_Their dog, a young German shepherd, stole as many licks as possible while she was down at his level. She was too huge to do it any other way, her belly swollen under the flowing white peasant-top, as if she were smuggling a pumpkin under all that fabric. The rest of her was just as trim and fine as the day he'd met her, while working as a garbage collector in Atlanta. Each Thursday morning, he'd hop off the back of the truck, hoping to catch a glimpse of the enchanting brunette whose name he didn't know. He'd always pause above the cans to search for her, gazing at the window to the tiny house she and two other women were renting. Life wasn't easy, even back then, when things were much simpler for him, a young preacher with a vision. Any morning when he could look upon her face, peeking above the white flowers by the windowsill, mouth hidden by the swaying petals as she washed a dish, or rinsed her coffee cup, was a good morning indeed._

_Joseph hadn't even seen all of her face, before he was in love. He just didn't know it yet._

_Somewhere between now, as he watched her fingers lace the secondhand boots with the careful deftness of a nurse, and then, when he'd approached her on the curve, confident, even in his stained jumpsuit, and asked her out for coffee, she'd become his wife. She had accepted a nobody, with nothing, from nowhere, into her heart without much resistance. Unlike him, she'd come from a big, loving family. The youngest of seven, she was the baby of the bunch, and her father hadn't taken too kindly to a street preacher courting his little girl. She'd ignored her father's complaints, and moved in with him almost immediately, drawn to his deep connection to religion and his passions for her, for his work, for people._

_Much, much more had happened in that space and time. He reconnected with John, working as a lawyer in Atlanta. They'd moved back to Rome, taking his new wife with him. Jacob joined them not long after. In a short span of less than a year, his family had grown from the handful of followers, gathered in an abandoned slaughterhouse that stank of old manure and offal, to more members than he'd ever known._

_And they were still growing. Rallying around him, and his message of hope and redemption. There was fear in the message, too, but only enough to drive them closer together. The empty chalice of his life was overflowing. Which only meant, looking back, it had been ripe for tipping over._

_The Lord giveth..._

Ava looks up from the dog, her boots splayed, arms still tied behind her back. She watches a change overtake Joseph's face. Her eyes flick to the gun, but he's already started to holster it. She gives him a questioning look: what changed his mind, all of a sudden?

"We had a dog," he says simply.

"...That's nice."

"His name was Micah," Joseph recalls, more to himself than the woman on the floor. He reaches behind his head and rubs his hair. "Micah means 'humble'. My wife named him that. She wanted our child to have a dog growing up. Said every kid should have one. It teaches them kindness, and responsibility, while they're young."

"I don't ca-" Ava starts, then shuts her mouth, perhaps learning her lesson from earlier, perhaps fearful any response from her could endanger the dog. 

At her silence, the barb she put in him sinks in a little deeper. Joseph inhales, nostrils flaring. Ava awaits his reaction, glancing at the record player, knocked askew on the cabinet. That, and the cloudy tank full of panicked fish, are the only evidence of what has transpired...

**Earlier :**

She doesn't stay unconscious for long. When she comes to, Joseph is gone. Her brief collapse against the bed is more from the shock of the nuclear bombs than exhaustion. Something is wrong with her eyes, an image imprinted or burned into her retinas that distorts things in the light. She's in the communications room, alone. Dutch's body is missing, but there's blood and drag marks on the floor.

At the sight of the blood, her entire body shakes, and her breath comes in sharp little intakes. It's shock, she knows, she's seen it in victims and criminals alike (and wasn't she both?). To stave it off, she counts backwards from ten, breathing, and runs through procedures in her head. What did she know about nuclear holocausts? Not a whole lot, admittedly. Ramirez would be laughing his ass off right now, were he still alive. Her LAPD squad always wanted to watch that stupid fucking _Prepper_ show. She had been content to make fun of the preppers themselves, and ignore anything the show tried to teach.

But her eyes were trained to notice details, while out in the field, and when Dutch had dragged her there, after getting blown off a bridge, she'd explored his bunker with a cop's roving eye. 

 _Okay, you know the layout of this place_ , she thinks.  _Great. What else do you know?_

She knew she had thought Dutch was nuts. That she'd found notes from his family, who had grown tired of his paranoid shit, and left him. They were probably dead now. And Dutch, for all his planning, the money he spent, the laws he fought, the family he lost, died in the safest place possible during the apocalypse. The irony isn't lost on her, and she lets out a low, hopeless laugh.

 _Books!_ In the other room are Dutch's volumes. Dozens of them. She had scanned their titles briefly, in between exploring the island and learning about her strange new home. The books would definitely have information about nuclear fallout. There were whole tomes on survival, bunker and equipment repairs, medical books, everything they might need to know! She would get her hands on them, formulate a plan, and get the hell out of dodge as soon as she could.

Now that she has a glimmer of hope, she doesn't wince when Joseph appears. His tall body fills the door frame for a moment. Her body is still, calm, though she's covered in ash and sweat. That thought reminds her of something grave, something extremely important. It's the one detail she remembers from that stupid show, the discussions with her coworkers.

"We need to take a shower," she tells him. It's the first time someone ever propositioned that to him with such urgency.

Joseph raises an eyebrow and tilts his chin back in response, as if her words are wasps droning around his head. Ava can't help but blush at little at the idea.

"We're covered in radiation particles, see," she explains. "And if we don't get it off us, we could get sick."

She can't tell if he's listening or not. He busies himself with something in a desk drawer, and pulls out a roll of duct tape. 

_Seriously?_

"I'm not jokin!" she cries. "I don't wanna spend forever here with boils on my face, turnin into somethin outta _The Hills Have Eyes_! And I doubt you do, either."

He pulls a strip, cutting it with his teeth, pushing his glasses back up his nose, and steps toward her.

"We need to take precautions, if we're gonna live!" she shouts, thinking she sounds like Dutch. Joseph leans over her. "LISTEN, asshole! You-"

He pops the duct tape over her mouth, sticking some of her hair as she tries to turn her head. When she's good and muted, he squats to eye-level with her.

"The only thing either of us needs to worry about," he says, and she can see toxic dust frosting his shoulders, his hair. "Is your salvation. God will take care of the rest."

 _God doesn't give a SHIT,_ she thinks angrily.  _God won't protect us from radiation poisoning, neither._

He takes the cuffs off for a second, releasing her from the bed, but puts them back on right away. He's strapped at the waist, a handgun on his belt, and she thinks about lunging for it, but she doesn't trust her own reflexes yet. Her vision is still too wonky from the blasts. Plus, did they really need TWO dead bodies in one shelter?

"Don't get any ideas," he warns, following her gaze to his hip. Her eyes linger over the 'LUST' tattoo for a moment, then his bellybutton, before she looks away.

Joseph escorts her into the rec-room, forcing her into a chair. He sits at the table, across from her, as if she's under interrogation. The tape makes breathing difficult, and she sucks in reprocessed air through her nose. The room smells, faintly, of fish food. There's a tank behind her, still running. The colorful fish swim and dart around, oblivious to the utter ruin of the world outside. The trickling filter is all she can hear, but then Joseph speaks again, and she rolls her head back in frustration.

He drags a copy of the  _Word of Joseph_ over, resting a hand on the cover, saying, "Let me tell you how this is going to work. We're going to—you can roll your eyes all you want, but you will listen to me—go over each of your sins. Every last one. In detail. You will confess, then you will atone, and accept God's light into your heart."

"Frk you," she mumbles through the tape.

He looks her dead-on, but she doesn't see a devil sitting across from her. Only a man. A troubled, traumatized, powerful one, whose emotions she must learn to read carefully.

"I'm going to save your soul, Ava, whether you want me to, or not."

She meets his stare with her own. Her lids are half-lowered in doubt.

"We can draw this out, as long as you want," he adds, cracking the white book open, peering over the frames of his aviators. All she can think about his how much she'd like to smash them with her fist.

"We have all the time in the world. Let's begin, shall we?"

He reaches out to her, for the duct tape. She braces herself for the sting, but he peels it off as gently as he can, leaving it dangling off her right cheek.

"John already atoned me," she tries, holding back curses and insults, a vein twitching in her forehead. She nods at her own chest. "Proof is in my skin."

He flips through pages in his book. "John barely touched the surface with you."

 _See, that's where you're wrong, pal,_ she thinks, remembering exactly how much of her John HAD touched. Just about every inch, and then some, most of it with his mouth. The memory feels like it's from a lifetime ago. Thinking about John fills her with equal parts rage and sorrow, and her heart swells with the pain. She swallows it down.

"What do you wanna know?" she asks, humoring him, but there's an impatient tone to her voice. She taps her boot on the floor.

"Let's start with the earliest one. The man who filmed you, by the pool, as a child. The one you shot-"

"NOPE," she interrupts hotly. "I told John, and he apparently told you. I thought your stupid confessions were s'posed to be private?"

Joseph stands up suddenly, the chair falling over. She starts to scoot away from the table, but he's quick, his long legs covering more ground than she can, and he shoves her by the shoulder back down. He smears the duct tape across her mouth.

"If you won't own up to your sins, then I will read to you," he says calmly, so calm it infuriates her. "God's own word. Until some of it sinks in."

And read he does. For hours. Maddening lengths of time, but he does it with the patience of a saint. When he needs a break, he spoon-feeds her a brief meal, and lets her use the toilet. He has to pull her pants and underwear down like he's helping a toddler, averting his eyes, only out of politeness. As she sits there, doing her business, she stares up at him, as nonchalant as can be.

He stares right back, the only sound the tinkling in the toilet bowl. _She's testing my patience. Waiting for me to screw up. That's what her antics are all about. Does she think I care? I've helped psychiatric patients who couldn't even wipe themselves._

 _Get used to this, Father,_ she thinks haughtily _. _I can do this all day. Don't bother me one bit.__

She retracts that thought a little as he rips off some toilet paper, giving her downstairs a courtesy swipe, as if she's a disabled geriatric. There's no hiding the color in their faces now, but he rips her pants back up as fast as he can, and gets her back to the room.

The more they stay in the rec room, the longer he ignores the situation with the bunker, asking her prying questions, reading her scripture instead. Her patience gives out somewhere around the eighth hour.

When he pulls off the duct tape again, she tries, one more time, to make him see reason.

"I'll tell you, but first can we get a schematic of the bunker? We also need to be taking stock of all our food and water. We-"

"Answer me."

"Joseph, come _on_."

"Answer the question. Deputy."

She glares at him. They've been at this for hours, with her dodging his questions or making flippant comments. She's in dire need of a shower and a nap. The only saving grace is that all this interrogating keeps her from being alone with her thoughts, which she can sense are gathering into a black wall.

"So, now you're back to calling me Deputy?" she asks, pretending to be hurt. 

He frowns, and reaches for the duct tape. No. Not again. She can't take any more. She needs something to happen, a change, anything from these four walls in this room and that FUCKING FISH TANK that won't stop TRICKLIN like the sweat tricklin down her spine like the piss she's forced to expel with him watchin, humiliatin her, TRICKLING like the blood that ran from John's lips after she shot him the same mouth she used to kiss and it's his fault it's all his FAULT! 

"Tell me one thing," she growls, dodging his hand. Her mouth is pink where the tape's rubbed her raw. "Was this all your doing?"

Joseph freezes. The question surprises him. He's exhausted, too. God tests every minute he still breathes under the rubble pile with this creature. Of course she would think that, knowing how close John was to the presidential administration, certain other inner circles. The whisperings, even among his followers, about old nukes stored in the silos he controlled. It is logical for her to think that. 

But it still angers him. She is so BLIND. How, after hours in this room, how can she still think she can ignore him?

"It was God's will," is all he says.

"That's not good enough!" she roars up at him. Tears burn in her eyes. "That's a SHIT answer and you know it! All our friends and family're dead. Everyone! And you just wanna sit here, playin your games? I deserve to know how, WHY-"

"Because it was meant to happen. Because God told me so, and I obeyed. It is that simple, child."

He reaches again for the duct tape. The tattoo of his wife catches her eye as he does so.

Trembling, she scoffs in disbelief. "What the fuck does that MEAN?"

No answer. Out of sheer frustration, at her wit's end, she tries to hurt him any way she can. Her rage comes up like vomit:

"How the HELL did your wife put up with your bullshit? Did you drive her nuts? Maybe she drove her car into oncoming traffic on purpose! Maybe she was fuckin somebody else and that's why she was drivin-"

The slap comes, hard, glancing off her face like a brick. It cracks her head to the right sharply. 

She takes a shaky breath, but he isn't done. He grabs her shoulders and hurls her across the room. She catches herself, but slams into a cabinet, and her elbow smacks a record player before she slides to the floor. The needle goes down, the disc revolves, and it starts to play:

 _Ah you're my best friend (you are my best friend), and I love you so well_  
_Till the end of time you won't see me_

 _Ah you're my best friend (you are my best friend), and I see you, it seems_  
_Now I can see I've fallen into your love stream_

Absurd. This is absurd. Was she supposed to believe Dutch was rocking out to Jefferson Airplane before the world ended? She looks up, with the music playing behind her.

They stare at one another, Joseph's chest heaving, his mouth open like a lion's. Ava cracks a faux-guilty smile, so tired she could collapse into a laughing, crying heap. 

"I'm sorry," she says.

He ignores the record player, and yanks her up by the elbow.

"No, you're not," he tells her softly. "But you will be."

He forces her over to the fish tank, rips off the lid, and dunks her head for the first time.

~

Minutes later, he's staring at the woman, and the stocky, panting dog on the floor in front of him, marveling privately,  _It's t_ _oo similar. It's too close to that day, to be coincidence._

He murmurs under his breath, "And the Lord taketh..."

She looks up at him. "What?" 

He sighs. "The dog can stay. But it must be tied up."

As if understanding, Boomer utters a low bark and slinks out of the room, his tail partially between his legs. Joseph crosses the room and starts after the dog.

Ava calls behind him, "Wait! He doesn't trust you. He knows me. Let me help."

She doesn't care about helping him, as much as she wants to protect her only friend in this world. Joseph thinks the better of it, remembering how many of his followers the dog mauled, and helps Ava off the floor. They enter the hallway and call out to it, checking each room. He keeps his fingers locked into her arm, hard enough to leave bruises. She ignores it, her sole concern making sure he doesn't change his mind.

They peek in a closet, Ava calling in a low, soothing voice that's unusual to his ears. Joseph watches her eyes scan the front, before they settle on the back of the room and she spots the blood, the body under the sheet. Dutch's boots stick out from it, his face covered by the white cloth. A sleeping ghost. 

She turns to face her captor, about to say something. A choked sob falls out instead. For all his weirdness, Dutch had been kind to her. He'd helped her feel at home in Hope County, and his guidance had probably saved her life, more than just once. He didn't deserve to die like this. None of them did...

As Ava fights back tears that roll down her cheeks anyway, Joseph stares at the body. Or, more accurately, the sheet.

_The bed sheets in the yard rippled in the breeze as his wife hung the last of the laundry, clothes pin pinched between her lips. Micah nipped playfully at the fluttering corners, at her ankles. Each time, she said something, giggled, and pushed him away with a careful shove of her foot. He was teething, and wanted to gnaw on everything, just as their first child would do, with time._

_Joseph stood in the back room to their home, a forfeiture John had found for them, with a leaky roof but a large yard, purchased not far from the packing plant where the bulk of his congregation stayed. He watched his wife finish up the laundry through the window. She'd planted more of her favorite white flowers on the pot outside the sill, and they waved at him in the fragrant summer wind, the only thing cooling down the sweltering house. He wasn't alone in the room, where two-dozen chairs were packed into rows. Each of his followers filled a seat, gazing up at him, a few with books in their laps or notebooks. He'd insisted they crowd inside the house, as there were more police driving down their street than usual._

_Their congregation had grown so much at the plant, it was starting to raise suspicions, not just those of the police, and he knew it would soon be time to uproot them._

_"As I was saying," he continued, looking away from the window. His fingers gripped the edges of the pulpit. He thumbed a bead to the cross he kept wound around his hand. "I, ah..."  
_

_He'd lost his place, a flush rising to his cheeks, his nose. He wiped sweat from his brow with a napkin._

_"That's okay, Father!" one of his followers, a woman, called from the back. "Happens to the best of us!"_

_A few others turned and laughed. One of them lifted his cell phone and checked the time. Joseph checked his notes again, a bit irked about the device, but he didn't say anything._

_"Ah yes. As I was saying, once we obtain the proper funds, we will purchase the buses in bulk, and have our handymen fix them up. These wretched capitalists throw things away when they can easily be repaired. These wastrels, these EXPLOITERS, will have no place in our new world, where everything and everyone will be used to its full potential."_

_"Amen!"_

_"Yes!"_

_After the sermon (this one short, only an hour that time) they met for coffee in the kitchen, some parishioners spilling over in the hallway with the cracked drywall. The house came alive with the sounds of people: their feet caused the floorboards to groan, and their voices carried outside the opened windows._

_Joseph was in the middle of speaking with a man in a suit, a recent convert, wealthy (though not as much as John) and with real estate experience. A hand gently seized his shoulder, and he turned to bump softly against his wife's belly._

_"I'm headed out," she whispered in his ear, stepping back. "See a lady to the door?"_

_Joseph politely dismissed himself from the real estate agent, a bit ruffled at the collar that he had to cut their conversation short. The man was important to their cause, and he was still on the fence about Eden's Gate. Also, he hadn't spoken with everyone yet, face to face, listening to their praises of him, their joys and sorrows. All directed at him._

_"You sure you have to go?" he asked her, once they stood in the foyer by the door. "I need you here."_

_His wife pulled out her smart phone and checked a text message. He frowned. She looked up and caught him at it, before he could wipe his expression clean._

_"What's that look for?" she laughed._

_"You know how I feel about the phones, and all that," he said quietly, his hand on the small of her back. "I only let you have it because you kept asking me for one."_

_Anything she asked for, she would have. He always gave in to her. No matter what God told him in dreams, in visions and omens (the phones being one of them). He loved her too much. It couldn't really hurt, could it? Surely God could allow a little technology in their lives, if it helped the cause._

_"I've been able to reach out to a lot more folks with this," she reminded him, waving the phone with the crack in the screen. She'd bought it off Ebay, using a computer at the local library. "So many people are hearing your message now! John is really skyrocketing things with his social media campaign."_

_Joseph winced at those words, his hand brushing his own phone in his pocket (dead, he kept it off almost all of the time). He didn't trust the internet, especially after the constant news stories about data leaks, government spying and tracking...but now wasn't the time to bring all that up._

_"Don't be on that thing while you're driving," he cautioned._

_She tucked it into her maternity jeans and winked at him. "I won't."_

_She leaned forward, and he sneaked a lustful glimpse at the swells of her breasts below the collar of her shirt, before meeting her eyes. They kissed briefly, a peck on the lips, with Micah sniffing for crumbs at their feet._

_Then she turned, shouldering her hospital bag, just in case, grabbed the keys to the Jeep Cherokee, and opened the door. Of all the people coming and going through the house that day, her departure burned into his memory, the way her curvy figure was boxed, almost framed by the doorway, before she shut the squeaky screen door so Micah couldn't get out._

_Before he can head back to the kitchen, into the sea of adoring faces and welcoming arms, his wife's voice carried through the screen._

_"Joseph."_

_He turned. Her shirt lifted and fluttered in the breeze, showing a hint of rounded skin, and she pressed it back down with her free hand. He smiled at her._

_"Be humble," was all she said. She nodded toward Micah, who looked up at Joseph, pink tongue lolling out of his mouth in a canine grin. The dog she hadn't asked him for. She'd simply brought him home from the shelter, and that was that._

_"Always," he told her._

_Satisfied, she took to the sidewalk, scrolling through her phone._ _She rounded the corner of the house, and was gone forever._

They round one, final corner, and find Boomer curled up under a bed, in one of the spare rooms. Judging by the puddles and landmines on the floor, he'd been in that room almost the entire time. Seeing as he'd already chosen it as his room, Joseph finds some rope and Ava coaxes the dog into letting him tie it around his neck, tethering him to one of the beds. 

"He's probably hungry," Ava remarks. "Can't you do somethin?"

Joseph twists his mouth. He wants to get her back in the rec room, sit her down and work on her some more. But the fight's left him for the day. What they need is rest right now, he senses. He throws a towel down on the floor and mops up the worst of the mess, gives Boomer a water bowl, some canned vegetables, which the dog scarfs down like it's his last meal.

Wordlessly, Joseph escorts Ava into her own room. As he cuffs her to her bed, she's still and silent, for once. Too silent. His arms tense as he quickly works the cuffs, fingers brushing against her bruised wrists.

"I'm sorry," Ava says. None of the thinly-masked rancor in her voice that time. Only words.

He doesn't look at her.

"About your wife and child. Nobody deserves that. I spoke outta turn. I'm sorry."

He turns. He realizes she's staring at the tattoo. His fingers linger on the cuffs.

"Thank you," he says, rising by her bedside. She's looking up at him like she wants to say something more, but her head sags against the pillow, and her eyes have gone glassy with sleep that can no longer be fought.

Afraid of breaking the sudden calm, he leaves her in the dark room, his body a silhouette in the doorway, before he shuts it behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to Jefferson Airplane for the song lyrics. Randomly came on my Spotify and made me laugh because I thought of Ava and Joseph. I decided Ava needs companionship and rezzed Boomer from the end of the world. Joseph could also use a reminder to retain his humanity, we'll see how they all get along...


	3. Let There Be Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The temporary 'truce' ends. Joseph's faith is tested in a new way. An incident with the bunker forces them to cooperate, giving Ava the upper hand at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured things were too heavy, so I wanted a lighthearted chapter (after the first quarter or so, lol) before I go away for a long weekend. I should have an update next week! Thanks to all who are still reading. :)

While Ava sleeps, left to her fevered dreams, Joseph paces the halls and rooms of the dead man's bunker.

The fact that he once had three shelters, all larger than this one, each stocked and powered to provide years of life to his extended family, is not lost on him. He swears he can taste the bitterness, as acrid and thick on his tongue as black coffee. Right now, he should have been comforting them in group prayer, gathered by the stairs and the makeshift pulpit. Right now, he should have felt God's light shining on him in the form of bright florescent bulbs, while the masses cheer: You were right, you were right! Thank you, Father! It was all worth it! Every drop of blood, every sleepless night, every soul-crushing sacrifice.

But their voices are silenced. The bunkers are molten shells, destroyed by the woman sleeping in the next room. The woman he must keep alive. When he'd first seen her, in his threadbare church surrounded by barbed wire, all the world had seemed to divide in on itself, until the two of them stood, face-to-face. He could have sworn he felt their destinies intertwining, an invisible, heated cable connecting them. God guided his hands as he held out his wrists to her, the outsider, the Lamb that was promised. He hadn't been certain of anything, other than one thing: God would have her do what must be done, and he would deal with the consequences. 

And how they attacked him, those consequences, not one by one, but in a swarm. And so, instead of the faces of his followers, he looks now only upon his boots as he paces. Much as he did when he was homeless and penniless, squatting in that meatpacking plant in Rome.

His wife. His brothers. Faith. His family.

 _Is nothing ever good enough for You?_ He stops suddenly in the hallway, face raised to the ceiling, eyes clamped shut. His fists are clenched at his sides, rosary swinging like a pendulum. There's nothing but the hiss of machinery, the occasional tectonic groan of earth compressing concrete and steel, to answer his question. But he knows he is never truly alone, no matter how empty-sounding his footfalls are as they echo through the structure.

He shakes his head, and peeks in on the dog, tied up in the room with the bunks, what he supposes was meant for Dutch's family. Boomer lays on one of the lower mattresses, licking his injured paw. The woman will want to fix him up. She showed more concern, more kindness toward the dog than she had any person, including him (and why should she? He'd only saved her life and spared her the one retribution he deserved!). Glaring, taking an exploratory step into the room, he sees the dog's fur bristle in a spiky line.

Boomer lifts his head, lets out a low rumble of warning, before going back to licking his wounds.

 _Maybe that is what I must do,_ Joseph thinks, leaving the dog to its business. There are no injuries on his own body, he'd checked himself earlier. Not so much as a scratch (other than the self-inflicted ones).

But something is broken. Shattered, perhaps beyond repair.

His breath comes in short, shallow bursts, all of a sudden. He leans against the wall, trying to remember the last time he's eaten or drank anything. He'd spoon-fed the woman, but never once lifted nourishment to his own lips. Her apology got to him, more than it should have. When he'd received the news of the car accident, his brothers had been there to comfort him almost right away.

Nobody is here to comfort him now.

Nobody. Alone with his thoughts, he can't help but think it: _Perhaps God has abandoned me. Perhaps we died and are in purgatory._

Molars grind against molars. He storms over to the showers, suddenly eager to have the sweat, blood, and ashes of a murdered world off him. Peeling free of jeans and boots that send up puffs of nuclear dust, he strips out of his clothing and throws it on a cart. His belly, normally taut and flat under all the muscle, is a bit sunken in, a few ribs showing, in need of a good meal. He yanks on the chain and sticks his head under cold, hissing, running water. The shower streams down his face, droplets taking the place of tears that won't come. His hands press into the concrete wall as he leans in, letting the frigid drops strike his face, his shoulders, his back.

Gradually, his head sags, wet hair freed of its band, trailing down his neck, the sides of his face. How is he supposed to go on? How can he get through to that woman, the destroyer, the murderer of his family? How does God expect him to exist with her in this hellhole? To CONVERT her? He doesn't know the first thing about her, and she refuses to open up to him. The only things that fly out of her mouth are locusts, lies, deceits, insults.

Apologies.

But one apology isn't enough to undo all the wrongs. He strikes at the wall with his fist, drawing blood. Strikes it again, harder, ignoring the bursts of pain as his bones slam against concrete.  _Damn her. God damn her. And God damn me._ He crushes himself into the wall, forehead grinding against it, as if the pressure can clear the tornado in his mind. He is about to sag into the floor and give up, lay there with the water wasting and running over his body, when something happens.

First, a loud groan from the pipes. Then, the generator in the hall, always emitting a resounding hum that he's gotten used to, sputters and coughs. It stops. The sudden silence creeps in like fog on a cold, dark morning. 

Then the lights shut off, and darkness enfolds him like a bag thrust over his head.

Boomer barks in the other room. Over and over, as if there's an intruder. Joseph listens over the dog's alarmed yipping. No noises from Ava. She's probably still out cold. She would probably sleep through a hurricane without much fuss.

 _Why are you worrying about her?_ He straightens up and yanks on the shower chain, to no effect. The water is still running, weakly, but it stops soon enough. There's been some sort of power or electrical failure, then. Their outside water source from the lake has been cut off, the pump and filter lifeless.

Light. He needs light. Feeling with his hands, he navigates the cave-like surroundings, tripping over junk Dutch had stored in the first hallway. Palming along the shelves, he finds a large, black, tactical flashlight. He reaches the family room with the bunk beds and shines the light on Boomer first. The dog is up and at the end of his leash, whimpering, but still tethered. 

He rushes to the next room, the infirmary, where he has Ava chained to one of the blue beds. He shines the light in, and the white beam falls directly across her sleeping face. Instead of waking, she grumbles and rolls over. Typical. All her talk of preparations, schematics, inventory, but when the first emergency happens, she's off in slumber-land. Let her sleep, then. Her attitude, her I-told-you-so's, are not what he needs at the moment.

He turns on his heel and pads over to Dutch's comm-room, searching, for what he's too tired to know. He digs through the desk, rifling through papers. Financial stuff, mostly, legal consultations and letters to his beleaguered lawyer, things that no longer matter (and he had partially seen to that, hadn't he? But the Lord will forgive him).

He yanks on the deep bottom drawer and spots a thick accordion folder, with a label that catches his eye. But before he can get it on the desk and examine it, his flashlight dies. He gives it a shake, to no avail.

"Damn it!" he hisses, instantly regretting it. Add that to the confession pile. It's stacking up rapidly with each second he spends down here, with her.

As he toils with the light, the generator groans again, a pipe squeaks, and the lights flicker, before coming back on. The usual hum of life from the machinery returns, albeit a little more strained, as if he is in the belly of a train chugging uphill. He can also smell fuel burning, somewhere.

Joseph doesn't care about that. He has, in his hands, an answer to his prayers: a thick folder simply labeled "Rookie". He lifts the flap and pulls out the first sheet of paper. It's a photocopy of a web page from the Hope County PD, listing all the officers and a brief bio of each. Ava's photo is there, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, but her face (pretty, when it isn't contorted at him in spite) is unmistakable. Her age and background are listed.

But it's not her name. Not the one she gave him, anyway.

The name next to her photo reads 'Anne M. Romano'. Her bio is shorter than the others:  _Deputy Romano, or 'Rook', as her squad mates know her as, is happy to be the newest addition to the HCPD. She has transferred all the way from Los Angeles, where she served the LAPD for six years, specializing in drug-related crime. She has come to serve the good people of Montana, and is enjoying the slower pace of life and change of scenery._

Joseph almost smiles, triumphant. John had done some digging into each of the HCPD officers, and he had paid connections in Washington that could give him anyone's Internet and phone history, pretty much anything at all. But when they'd tapped Ava's (or whatever her real name was), the well of information was dry. Suspiciously so, as if someone had emptied all the muddy water in a great big hurry. Still, John hadn't shirked the research portion of his law degree, and they'd discovered a few things. But nothing like this. Leave it to paranoid men like Dutch. A shame he hadn't been able to bring him to his side.

Now, at least, perhaps he has his answers.

"I'm sorry for doubting you," he murmurs aloud, flicking his eyes to the ceiling.

"Sorry for _what?"_ a thick, sleepy voice calls.

He nearly drops it, and shoves the drawer shut before striding into Dutch's room (his now) and tossing the folder on his bed. Then he strolls into the infirmary.

Forgetting he's stark naked.

Ava is sitting up. At the sudden sight of him filling the doorway, _all_  of him, wet and glistening, the color rises to her neck and face. She asks, cool as a cucumber,

"Doing a little midnight hot yoga?"

He freezes. Nakedness is nothing he's ashamed of, God made him that way, after all. But he hadn't been prepared for her to see him like this.

"Christ! Quit standin there and put a towel on or something!" she snaps, a little more edge to her voice as she averts her eyes. Joseph is built  _very_  similar to John, and the thought fills her with all sorts of conflicting emotions.  _I need this right now like I need a hole in my head._

He sidesteps out of the doorway and rifles through a spare clothes bin in Dutch's room. There are unworn jeans of a slimmer size, perhaps meant for Dutch's son, and he throws them on, tugging the zipper up as he walks over to the infirmary. Ava sees him fix the button on his pants, wet hair coiling around his brow and the top of his neck, and all but forces herself to look away.

"What happened?" she asks.

"It doesn't matter. It's fixed," he tells her, placid.

"Hmph. Like hell it doesn't matter."

But it's ungodly early, and she's still too tired to argue. She huffs her frustration and turns her back to him, rolling on her side. Having one wrist cuffed to a bed makes everything uncomfortable, but she doesn't show it. The clock on the wall reads 3:03 a.m. It must have had its own battery source, because it had stayed on during the outage, giving off a faint, eerie red light.

In the other room, the dog has fallen silent. Joseph retreats, sitting on Dutch's bed. He hadn't even bothered changing the sheets. Now, as he rolls fitfully on top of them, he dreams in convoluted images, whose running colors he cannot separate. After a few restless hours, dozing in and out, he picks up the folder and begins to read each and every file.

* * *

The following morning, Ava notices a change in her captor's mood. There's a stiffness to his step, a blank sheet where his concerned face should be. She supposes he's worried about the bunker, after all, and she's happy to gloat to him when he sits her down in the rec room. She can hear Boomer's noisy slurps and burps as he wolfs down a bowl of food. Knowing what would come next, she frowned. Joseph hadn't even laid newspaper out for the poor dog, and she was starting to wonder if he had lost his ability to think about the future.

 _Cleanliness matters more than anythin right now,_ she thinks, while Joseph fixes himself some breakfast. _We're in a damn Petri dish and we've got a dead body under a sheet, and a dog that poops like a moose. Oh, not to mention the generator might be clogged worse'n Hurk Senior's arteries. If I don't give this guy somethin and get him focused on what actually matters, might be better off openin the hatch and letting the fallout take care of us._

"Hope that thing has a manual in the back," she tells him, nodding to his strange, white Bible, which she is sick of seeing. "Maybe some spark-notes. Cuz without Dutch's stuff, the next power failure ain't gonna be as fun."

"What makes you think _any_ of this is fun?" he replies tersely, poking at a bowl of cereal with his spoon.

She chuckles darkly. "Could fooled me, the way you were runnin around."

He throws the spoon into the bowl of cornflakes. "No breakfast, then."

Ava heaves a frustrated sigh. He takes his bowl to the sink, and she finds it odd that he doesn't finish his meal, either. Her stomach rumbles in protest as he dumps the food down the sink. _Now he's wastin our supplies. Where the fuck did this guy go to school?_ There's a coffee pot on the counter, in the kitchenette to her right, and her head throbs miserably. Days without caffeine, she feels her mood tip southward.

Joseph is silent and contemplative when he sits down across from her, his arms folded below the numerous tattoos on his chest, including a pair of sparrows on his upper pectorals. Dimly, she recalls learning their meaning while studying gang markings. The sparrow mates for life, and to have a pair of them can represent one's bond with their spouse. They can also represent loyalty to one's family. 

She looks away and blushes, thinking,  _Would it kill him to put a shirt on?_

 _Would it kill her to stop slouching, and take this seriously?_ he muses. For all his misery, Joseph keeps their conversation light, for the moment.

"Did you manage to sleep at all?" he asks.

"Like a baby," she lies.

Half the time, if she isn't bawling silently into her pillow ('ugly cryin', Addie used to call it, but thinking about her is too painful), she's lost to dreams she cannot remember. Maybe that's for the best.

She looks at the white book. "So what now? We got to the end of that thing, right? Your _Revelations,_ or whatever. Does it have a postlude?"

"I am the postlude," he answers, pointing to his temple.

"...Great."

"Ava. I found something last night." He puts the folder on the table and takes out a few sheets. "Or should I say, 'Anne'? What _is_  your real name, Deputy?"

His accusatory tone was like steel wool shoved into her ears. She finally did sit up straight, flexing her fingers against the tight grip of the cuffs.

"That _was_ my new name. For my new life," she says, evasive. "When I was relocated to Hope County..."

"What was wrong with your old name?" he pries. "Why did you relocate? And it's best you do not lie to me."

He hefts the heavy folder in one hand. She can only guess it was Dutch's. Perhaps he'd done some investigating into her. But why? Why would he care about her? How much did Joseph know?

 _"You're not a good person..."_ John's words echo from the grave, causing her to shiver. Joseph notices the goosebumps breaking out on her flesh.

Feigning disinterest, she says idly, "My sergeant and the lieutenant saw fit to transfer me, so I did. And you know, I missed the mountains  _so._ "

"Can you explain this?"

With a smirk of amusement from Ava, she watches him lay out an article from the _LA Times_ , titled "Deadly East Side Heroine Bust Leaves Officer Dead". He set another article down, this one from a week later: "LAPD Branch Under Investigation" with a byline of 'Suspicions of abuse of power, illegal drug seizures, and more following Tuesday's deadly shootout'.

The smirk vanishes. Poring over at the old, black and white articles takes her back, and she restrains a mournful sigh. She can smell the stale coffee and cigarettes of the break room, can still hear her sergeant's booming voice summoning her to his office. Once, he had sat across from her, in the interrogation room, not all that dissimilar from now. He'd wanted to know why her partner, Deputy Ramirez, was dead, why they had thought it was a good idea to take that warehouse without backup, why they were using a retired van that should have been rusting a in a junkyard or carting old people to the grocery store, not getting one of his men killed, and she couldn't handle the disappointed look he'd given her, better that he should be angry, throw her around the room, even, but she can't take letting people down, like she had let her sister down...

"Ava?"

She looks up, lost in something, he senses. He's seen that look in repentant sinners, before. Usually when they had guns turned on them and a few family members in chains.

"It is time you start being honest with me. I had hoped we could make some progress."

 _You're a shit interrogator_ , she thinks, glaring daggers at him.

"I can't."

Joseph splays his arms out wide. "Why not? No one but me can hold you accountable now."

Ava tilts her head arrogantly. "For one, I don't like you much. Been sorta a big fuckin pain in my side."

"Likewise."

She would have laughed under different circumstances.

"For 'nother, I'm afraid if I tell you anythin, you'll change your mind about redeemin me. Might just find yourself thinkin I'm better off dead."

Joseph's lips thin into a line. He lets her talk, though, hoping she'll screw up and reveal something. But he doesn't let those hopes float  _too_ high.

"To tell you the real truth," she finishes, sliding back down her chair like a bored teenager, and it irks him. "I don't want you to know, cuz you don't deserve the _satisfaction._ My business is my business."

"I think the present situation suggests otherwise, don't you?"

She shrugs in her apathy.

He presses, "What better time for salvation than the end of the world?"

"Oh, I guess you haven't forgotten about that, then. You figure out what's wrong with the damn generator?"

"Stay on the subject, Deputy."

"What else is in that folder, Joseph?" she asks, choosing her words carefully. "John, ah...once told me something. Ya'll seem to know an awful lot about me."

He doesn't react at the mention of his brother, focused on his task. She, on the other hand, is shifting, uncomfortable in her chair. His good cop routine is starting to work. She had perhaps been expecting more fire and brimstone from him, more baptism-by-fish-tank.

"Does that surprise you?" he asks.

"I just find it rude, really. Ya'll were nosier than a pack of truffle pigs at a body farm."

 _Really!_ He almost balks. She calls him 'rude', when she destroyed his life's work? But he puts the articles away, and sets the folder aside. He rises, walking over to stand right behind her. At his nearness, his warmth, she fights to avoid leaning forward, a chill rattling down her spine. She's sitting cross-legged, her cuffed wrists in front of her and on the table, rather than behind her back. Still, she's utterly defenseless.

Using the lightest, benign touch he can, he lays his hands on her shoulders. She's wearing a sleeveless shirt, and can feel his calluses against her bare skin. Instead of wrenching away in revulsion, she doesn't react. She won't give him anything, not a confession, not information, not even the satisfaction of making her squirm.

But what he says next, is a bomb she isn't expecting:

"I know what you did," he whispers in her ear, his beard tickling her. She flinches a little, but doesn't move. "I know you more intimately, now, than anyone else on earth. I know your soul is troubled, that you barely slept at night, even before Hope County. Let me help you, Deputy. I can lift the burden on your heart."

"Okay, that's creepy as shit. Take your hands off me, please!"

He does so, his thumb tracing the rosary in thought. He moves to her side, and sets a hand on the table, leaning his hips against it, reminding her of John with his workbench. She misses him, damn it. Misses his radio calls at two in the morning, the way he'd flirt shamelessly with her while the rest of Holland Valley was asleep. Misses his touch, how he could go from demon to angel in no time at all, and seemed to read her moods and desires better than she could. Once, she had thought John was her twisted version of a partner. Maybe not a soulmate, but someone who understood the darkness inside her. For all his sins, all his fuck-ups, even, God, even the torture, she had loved John Seed.

The tears gather in her eyes. She turns her head away from Joseph, ashamed all of a sudden. John's memory casts a pallor over her heart, aging her by fifty years it seems, and suddenly her walls start to crumble...

"The light of truth can be painful," Joseph preaches, reaching for his book. The sanctimoniousness in his voice has her wrath rearing its ugly head, and the walls start to rebuild themselves.

He looks up to the string lights, continuing, "God's judgment can burn worse than the sun, I know, believe me. But it is better than spending your entire life in darkness."

The lights pop off. Ava jumps out of her skin.

"Holy shit!" she breathes.

The generator doesn't groan this time, but it rumbles and lets off a godawful screech that sets the hairs on her neck standing up.

"Joseph?"

He makes a sound of recognition, too perturbed to speak.

"Please, tell me you did that on purpose. Religious allegories, or some shit."

"I'm afraid not," he says, somber.

She can't see him at all. She isn't afraid of the dark, hasn't been, even as a child, but she _hates_ the sudden quiet with every fiber of her being. It feels like she's in a tomb.

"Wait here," he tells her. She listens for his footfalls, growing fainter as he leaves the room.

Just as soon as he's gone, she takes her chance and scrambles, seeing it, ironically, as a sign from God. She scoops up the folder, and feels her way to the book shelf. Blind as a bat, she knocks armfuls of books into her arms, hoping she memorized their locations correctly. She runs with them for Dutch's comm-room, knowing the layout of the bunker better than her captor. With catlike grace, she keeps her footsteps silent, and heads for the ghostly glow of the battery-powered clock shining through the doorway.

She sets the books down by the safe. Then, she uses her cuffed hands to dig through the drawers, gathering armfuls of documents. She throws these on top of the book pile and starts working on the combination to the safe. Dutch had been ranting to her about water collecting regulations or some such bullshit one day, and she had pretended to pay attention, watching him work the dial and numbers instead. Listening for Joseph, her heart pounding in her ears, she fumbles with the dial and has to start over.

Boomer starts to bark. She winces, unable to hear over the echo. A beam from Joseph's flashlight dances on the wall, illuminating the big map and the x'd out faces of the Seed siblings. They seem to watch her, silently, in the gloom. Eyes wide, she works the dial again, fingers sweating, wrists burning against the cuffs, and finally gets the door open. She piles the books, all but one, and bunker manuals inside and shuts it fast, giving the dial a spin. She picks the spare book up and heads for her room.

Nearly collides into Joseph on her way out. He is struggling with his flashlight, which has decided not to work again.

The book and flashlight each fall to the floor with guilty thuds. She had taken a copy of the collective poems of Robert Frost. A little light reading to stave off the madness.

"What do you think you're doing!?" Joseph cries.

Boomer's barks come faster and louder at the anger in his voice. She can hear his claws scraping on the metal as he whimpers and pulls on his leash.  _Good dog._

"Get outta my way!" she growls.

He bends and picks up the flashlight, spotting the book, and she shoves him. He falls over, and she runs for the armory, hoping she can find something to bust the cuffs with. Her breath comes in dry bursts, and her limbs feel like they weigh a hundred pounds each.

He clicks the flashlight, but it stays off. Cursing under his breath, he throws it at the wall, using the scant lights from the clocks to hunt her instead. The bunker has become a dark labyrinth in the absence of light, but he uses the walls to help guide him. He stops, listening. A broom falls over, clattering to the floor, and Ava bolts for it from her hiding place behind some shelves.

 _No you don't._ He's faster than her, though, and tackles her to the floor from behind. They roll together, struggling. One for control, the other for her freedom.

"Let go!" she screams. "You're hurting me!"

"Good!" he snarls, slamming her down again, knocking the breath from her lungs. "Maybe some pain will knock some sense into you!"

A high-pitched howl drifts from Boomer, way down the hallway. Neither of them pays it much mind. There's another sound, too, between the howls, something that skitters and chatters, taunting the dog, but they can't hear it while rolling around on the floor.

Ava's elbow strikes the wall, and she cries out. She knees Joseph in the gut, and he doubles over, but grabs her wrists before she can roll away. Pinning her between his legs, he gets her wrists up by her head, his grip like an iron vice. She wiggles free somehow, skin slick with oil and sweat, and goes for his eyes with her fingers, shoving his aviators askew. He brings his head back, hissing. Before they can do anything else, the lights stutter. The power comes back on, one fixture at a time, until they're left blinking at one another stupidly.

Joseph stares down at Ava. Her hands cup his face, frozen at just the right time. Her left palm is tapered along his jaw, as if stroking him, his skin flushed beneath her fingers. She gawks up at him, flustered. He is sitting on her pelvis to keep her pinned, legs gripping her in place. His hands are on either side of her head. It's the closest she's been to a person in days, but it's _him_ , for Christ's sake, and she doesn't know how to handle it. 

Joseph, however, does.

He brings his face closer to hers, and she balks, protesting, cursing, sure he's going to act on some repressed, deranged desire of his. But instead he brings his forehead against hers, the way she's seen him do to John in a gesture of tenderness. His cool breath caresses her face, pieces of his hair tickling her. The closeness of him causes all the tension to ebb out of her body, like the ocean tide receding.

"Stop fighting," he says quietly. "Just stop fighting, Ava."

"But you-" she starts, her heart hammering in her ribs. The words won't come out.  _But you don't know me. Why don't you hate me? Why are you trying to save me? Fight me, damn it!_

He sits up instead. Her hands slide off his face and onto her breast. A cold void replaces his heat, and the remorse she feels at his absence astonishes her. Before he can question her about what she was doing, before she can snap something up at him, tell him to get the hell off, something sleek and gray darts by his leg.

"What the hell?" Ava yelps. "Was that...was that a squirrel?"

Boomer howls again. A fluffy tail disappears around the corner to the armory.

"I think so."

He helps her to her feet. They listen for the creature, and find it clinging to a locker full of ammo. Joseph draws his gun, but Ava stops him with a harsh word.

"You can't fire that in here, idiot!" she snarls. "GOD! No wonder your Peggies were such morons."

"What do you suggest?" he snaps back, irate, watching the squirrel taunt them from the overhead lights now. Its tail twitches devilishly, beady eyes leering down at them.  _God had our suffering in mind the day he made rodents..._

"That's probably what messed with the generator," she suggests.

"A squirrel hardly looks like it's capable of-"

"-Maybe it was chewin wires, or stashin stuff in a pipe. No way Dutch's equipment would fail otherwise. The guy took more pride in his shelter than a prized dog dick."

He cringes at that, but nods his head. "I'll get the dog."

"Psh. You better take me along."

She gets Boomer on a leash, leading him to the armory. He sniffs at the ground, tail wagging in excitement, and nearly bowls her over trying to pull himself into the room.

"Is this really the best way?" Joseph sighs, peering around the corner like there's an assassin waiting for them.

"Trust me. I've seen him massacre an entire family of wild hogs, and I ain't talkin about yours."

They let Boomer loose just outside the armory. He charges around the corner, barking. There's a crash, and a few excited yips, and the wet crunch and high-pitched squeak of the inevitable slaughter. They enter the room, and Joseph expects to see a flood of blood and gore, but Boomer only has the squirrel in his jowls, like a sagging gray mustache. He tries to take it from him, but the dog backs away, growling.

"Leave it!" Ava commands.

Boomer sets the squirrel, the sum of all their fears, down with a wrinkle of his forehead. His tongue lolls out and he runs over to her, eager for praise. She scratches him behind the ears as Joseph watches, not amused.

They work together to find the source of the damage to the generator. Sure enough, the squirrel had eaten through a few wires. Thankfully, it was nothing severe. But it would require careful repairing.

"We'll need to look at the wiring in this place, to make sure we don't electrocute ourselves," Ava says.

"Where would that manual be?" he asks. The dog sniffs at him once, wary. He has let Boomer run around the shelter for now, figuring the dog deserves a reward for his services.

"Oh, are you sayin you care about that stuff, all of a sudden?" she rubs it in savagely. He kneels to inspect the rest of the generator, not really sure what he's looking at.

She kneels next to him and elbows him in the ribs. "Sure you don't just wanna _pray_ about it?"

At her jab, he twists away from her touch, nearly knocking her on her ass in the process.

"Just get what we need before the power dies again!" he shouts.

She smiles awkwardly. "See, that's where you're gonna get mad."

"What do you mean?" He pauses, then remembers the book that fell from her arms. He pinches the bridge to his nose, shuts his eyes, and sighs, "What did you do, Ava?"

She lays her bargaining chips out for him plainly:

"I put all the important shit in a safe. Manuals, documents. Your little spy folder. Only I know the combination."

 _Wretched woman._ Joseph reaches for his gun, furious. He knows it's futile, that she has won some ground over him, but he can't have things slipping from his control like this! Boomer's ears stand up, and he rushes to Ava's side, but she strokes him calmly. She's had so many guns pointed at her, she's desensitized to them almost entirely. Almost. There's a slight tremble to her lip.

"This is a breach of trust," Joseph hisses, holstering his gun as quickly as he'd drawn it, and she relaxes. "I had thought about taking the cuffs off you, too."

"Lotta good it did, havin em on me." She grins, wiggling her fingers as she holds up her hands. "So, this is how we're gonna operate now. I help you with real life shit, and you get these cuffs off me. You treat me like a lady."

 _Lady?_ Joseph does laugh that time, harsh, sarcastic.

"Or a human being, at least," she corrects. "You stop askin your dumb questions too."

"Listen good!" He grabs her by the arm and starts to protest, but the generator rumbles once, threatening them.

"I'll take the cuffs off," he amends. "But, you _will_ sit down with me, every single day, and we will talk. And you will attend my services on Sundays. Or the cuffs stay on."

Ava would rather go to jail for the rest of her life than church, but just then, it's the best contract she's ever heard. Besides, she has no intention of honoring it.

She smiles charmingly. "Fine. Deal!"

 _I can see through you, a mile away,_ Joseph thinks, but he says nothing.

She extends her hand to him. He looks at like it's a poisonous snake, but reaches out and shakes it, the cuffs rattling. At his touch, she lets her hand linger a little, staring into his eyes, reading him. Perhaps there is a sane person, even a gentleman in there, after all, under that obnoxious messiah complex. Only time would tell.

Together, they go to the safe, Boomer trotting close behind in his newfound freedom.

This time, the lights stay on.


	4. Prayers for Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As if the end of the world wasn't enough, Ava uncovers a grim truth. She turns to something unorthodox for comfort. Joseph grieves someone for the first time since their death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of suicide and violence in this chapter. I tried to keep it lighter at times, to balance things.
> 
> Anyway, sorry for taking so long to update! Busy, busy. I'm happy with how this chapter went down, though. Dialogue is my favorite to write, and I am enjoying my break from the heavy flashbacks, but they're a'comin, don't worry.

Before the cuffs can come off, Joseph takes certain...precautions. The shepherd must give his flock room to graze, after all, but he must always put up a fence, must always keep a watchful eye. Lest the wolves come.

Speaking of wolves, he shoves a howling Ava backwards, twice, because she tries to run past him immediately after the first time.

"Fucker!" she growls, over his shoulder. She can't claw at him in cuffs, so she resorts to slamming into him, but his muscular back is like a wall. "Hypocrite!"

She's so mad, she can't say more than one or two words, and even those have a tough time coming out of her mouth.

He's in the process of locking up the armory, where he's stored all the guns, save the one on his hip, and most of the heavier objects she could use to bludgeon him with. Construction pipes. Shovels. A couple of baseball bats. The kitchen knives, infirmary scalpels, scissors, even the bathroom razors are locked away, too. Vases, lamps, heavy flashlights, tool boxes. All of Dutch's booze, and the cigars and cigarettes, adding special insult to injury.

Hell, even the fish tank gets unplugged and shoved in with the rest. As if he expects to wake up one night, with her holding it over his head. She'd be a liar if she said she hasn't thought about it. The fish are in a massive glass lemonade pitcher, and only because she had threatened to kill him and herself when he went over to the sink to dump them out. In all of human history, such a fit had never been thrown over guppies.

"You really are like a child!" he shouts, as he shoves the key in the door. He's sweating from his exertions, and the key slips a little in his fingers.

"What good do you think this'll do, huh?" Ava snarls, still hovering over his shoulder. Her chest brushes against his back, and his elbow makes a return appearance. She jumps aside before it can catch her in the gut.

"If I was gonna kill ya, I'd use my damn fists!" she hisses. She buttons her lip right after saying it.  _Do you really want to give him an excuse to leave the cuffs on? If he does, I'll stomp him to death, swear to God._

He can practically hear her plotting. _Just you try something, child. Do not test my patience._  

Then, the key turns with a definite click. Ava pouts. He puts it and the ring of keys on his belt loop, near the dampened Lust tattoo on his lower back.

"I ought to have a gun," she insists, looking up at him. "To defend myself, once we go outside."

 _Outside_ , he thinks, forlorn.  _She still thinks we're getting out of this so easily. If only she'd open her eyes to the truth._

"Your wrath is getting the better of you," he tells her instead, turning around to face her. There's another small key pinched in his fingers.

"Whatever."

She thrusts out her wrists, half expecting him to change his mind. But he takes the cuffs off, without any further disruptions. She refuses to look at him, his touch making her skin pimple with goosebumps. The sudden loss of their weight leaves her arms weirdly light, and it feels even stranger to spread them, almost unnatural. Her shoulders are stiff and complain the entire time. Her wrists are bloody, scabbed and ringed with bruises where she's struggled against them for days. It has been almost two weeks since he sealed them both away in 'the tomb', as she's come to think of it as.

"We should-"

He starts to say something, but Ava can't stand looking at his sweaty face, so she runs down the hall (Boomer following after her, thinking she wants to play). She checks all over, surveying the damage. Half-sobs in disbelief. There are padlocks on _everything._ He found a bag of locks, chains, and keys, and had a fucking heyday putting locks on the food cabinets, the desk drawers, ammo and supply boxes. Any hatch that can be locked, has one on it. His efforts have left him panting and drained. She had dogged him the entire time, kicking, cursing, but ultimately unable to stop him. And complaining took a lot of precious energy, so gradually she had no choice but to let him do it.

The end result: Dutch's bunker looks like an obsessive-compulsive locksmith's house, with a bit of a chain fetish thrown in for good measure.

Shirtless Wonder strides into the kitchen, wiping his forehead. He finds her sitting at the table, and he's surprised she isn't tired of it yet. She's watching the fish adjust to their new home in the lemonade pitcher. She picks it up and carries it back over to the spot where the fish tank was, as if they cared about such things.

"We should disinfect your wrists," he finishes.

She's shocked he doesn't try to 'faith heal' her first, but has no gladness to spare.

"I can do that myself." Ava remains standing, watching the fish swim in awkward circles, bumping into the glass.  _I'm sorry you're stuck in there, guys. Try not to die on me._

"Not without my key."

She tenses, gouging her nails into the wood of the side table. This give-and-take shit is tiring her faster than she likes to admit. He's never gonna make it easy for her, is he?

"You're an _ass_ , Joseph."

"And you are a _stubborn mule_ , Deputy."

Ava spins on her heel. She goes to fold her arms, but winces from the pain, and leaves them at her sides. Joseph shows not guilt, no concern for her pain.

"Is this how you want to spend the rest of our time here?" she asks hotly. "Hurling animal insults at each other?"

"You already know what I want."

She glances off to the side, fuming. Blushing, he observes.

Boomer paws at her feet and whines, and she strokes his head. She had won the dog's life, and her freedom to roam the bunker.  _He's not taking this victory from me_. She needs to feel some sort of control, so she storms into the comm-room and rips the safe open, taking out one of her prized books. She shuts the safe and twirls the lock, but Joseph hasn't followed her to begin with, and her ego deflates a little. He could at least pretend the books had been more important! But she doesn't care where or what he's doing, and seeing as they already did their stupid Bible study for the day, she decides to study something more worthwhile.

The text in her hand is an old book from the 80s, _Surviving the Unthinkable_. Nuclear war, and what comes after. There's no picture on the front cover, just a red square with bold, white lettering printed inside. The shouty kind, meant to catch the eye of paranoid Baby Boomers at gun shows and airports. She throws herself on her bed, tucks her wavy brown hair behind her ear, and cracks it open.

Her mind has been grinding the questions, over and over: how long must they stay down there? What should they do? She only thinks in terms of 'they' because she's no moron. Joseph Seed may have won the top spot of her Shit List, but without him, she knew she would go insane. People _need_ other people. As LAPD, she had done way too many welfare checks, in the boonies and the desert, knocking on doors to apartments and lonely, remote houses, breaking in only to find the bodies of said loners. Men who had become far too eccentric in their solitude for their own good. A lot of times they 'ended' the burden of their 'eccentricity' with a bullet to the head.

People could only take so much confinement, so much loneliness. She had taken Dutch for that type, and, grimacing, she makes a mental note to flip through and see what the book recommends on body disposal.

She reads on. She only gets a few pages into the first chapter, 'After the Apocalypse: A Realistic Outlook', before she slams the book shut.

_God almighty...figures. First time I open a book in years and it tells me that._

Ava raises her eyes to the ceiling, not unlike Joseph. Instead of praying or listening, she sucks in a breath that wants to be a sob. Fights back tears pooling in her eyes. Boomer has gone into another room. Joseph is off somewhere, probably reading his Bible. She is alone, the only sound the hiss of a pipe in the wall and the empty hum of the ventilation system. She takes a few deep breaths, trying to steady her heartbeat. The more she focuses on her breathing, the worse she feels, and she tucks the book under her pillow and stands up suddenly.

She paces around the bunks, wishing she had a stiff drink. Boomer hears her, and runs in. She puts a hand out, and he licks her fingers, which are trembling as if with palsy. Or a junkie going through withdraw.

At the kitchen table, under the carnival string lights, Joseph looks up from his white book, his aviators flashing. Ava strides in, her face drained of blood. She sees his quizzical look and tries to appear annoyed, rather than terrified.

"The disinfectant," she says, holding up her wrists. "I better clean these."

He shuts his book. "We should talk, Ava."

" _Please_ ," she murmurs, and her desperation takes him by surprise. "I just wanna get these wounds taped up. They're...smartin, pretty bad."

She puts on a show of how suddenly in pain she is. He doesn't buy it, but he stands, and walks back down to the armory. She can't tell if he's trying to show he has a merciful side, getting her to let her guard down, or if he's genuine. Her hands are still shaking, so she shoves them in her jeans pockets. Joseph retrieves some gauze and hydrogen peroxide, along with a tube of antibacterial salve, watching her carefully the entire time. She stands just outside the room.

Boomer rushes in past her, sniffing everything. Joseph slams the bottle of peroxide down. Ava runs in after him and snatches him by the collar, leading him out.

"C'mon, you dumb mutt. There's no dog food in there. No more squirrels, neither. I think you killed the last one alive."

Joseph watches them both like a hawk, locking up the armory and pointing for her to go to the infirmary, like she's some sort of canine. She sits down in front of the 'Love at First Sight' car poster, and he lets her clean her own wounds in silence. He surveys her from a chair in the corner, legs spread, arms resting across his knees. Ava's face is different. Withdrawn. He takes a moment to study it, in that softened state, without the usual bristling eyebrows, the twisted lips spitting poisonous words at him. It's a nice face, overall. Pretty, the way her hair coils, and falls in front of her eye, as she works.

Then:

"Do you have to stare at me so fuckin much?" she asks, winding tape around her wrist.

"What's wrong?" he asks, knowing well and good what it's probably about. He heard her unlock the safe, and he doubts she has discovered a sudden appetite for Tom Clancy novels.

At his voice, some of the anger burns its way into her again, and he sees the flame jump to life. It's been reduced to matchstick size, though.

Her dark eyebrows knit together in a glower. "Nothin."

Joseph sighs, disappointed. The time is rapidly approaching when he will force her to admit her greatest sin, but it is not yet right. Not quite. Let her have the contents of Dutch's folder. He had John's research stored in his mind, as well as everything he had read from the file.

Ava takes no umbrage from his sighing. She finishes daubing peroxide on the wounds, placing used, pink cotton balls on a tray by the bed. Using a cotton swab, she globs a generous amount of antibac on it, then slathers it on each wrist. Without so much as a flinch, he notices, but she's taking care not to get an infection. She wraps up her wrists carefully enough, and gets up without bothering to put the lids back on the containers. He does it for her, his eyes following her as she leaves and heads for her room again.

She hangs a spare sheet in the doorway, since their rooms have neither doors nor locks. He says nothing about this, though.

"Don't worry, Father! Not gonna off myself and give you the satisfaction!" he hears her call behind the sheet.

He sighs again. The rest of the day is uneventful. They eat meals by themselves, and Ava cares for Boomer. She plays fetch with him, throwing  a piece of PVC pipe half-assed around the bunker so the dog can get exercise. Joseph meditates and consults with his book, reading, always reading. When he isn't, he lays on his bed in his room, staring at the ceiling, or he goes to the communications room and rifles through the remainder of Dutch's documents. He finds old files on his family and brings them to his room, hanging up photos of John, Jacob, and Faith (the ones that don't have cigarette burns or wrinkles, that is).

Hours pass. Soon his room is completely lined in newspaper clippings and pictures of himself, his family, his people. Headlines from the local paper, _USA Today_ , and the _Atlanta Journal-Constitution_ shout at him in bold, black typeface from the walls: "Local Cult Takes Roots, Not Going Anywhere", "Who is Joseph Seed?", "Eden's Gate Lawyer to Buy Apple Orchard, Eyeing Other Properties", "Cult Rejects Funding from Tuttle Foundation", "China Has Doubled Nuclear Arsenal in the Past 2 Years!", "Bio-Terrorism, Nuclear War Most Discussed Topics at UN Summit", "Russia Not Backing Down", and, an interview from years ago that he's surprised to see, from an obscure New York City hipster/fringe magazine:

"Are We Close to Doomsday? One Montana Cult Leader Says 'Yes'". He reads the opening paragraphs:  _From the moment I stepped into Hope County, Montana, I thought I had flown there on a time machine, and not by banana-yellow boat plane, with a proud, soon-to-be-father, Nick Rye, as my pilot. Here, in this random, obscure, rural slice of Americana, there are no plasma screen TVs. Almost nobody has internet, let alone wifi. Most people still have a landline phone and message machine in their house. The only decent bar miles around is called something that would offend most of our college-age readers, so I'll spare you the name. In Hope County, if you aren't the proud owner of a prepper shelter and a steadfast drinker of Whistling Beaver pilsner, and you don't have at least ten American flags hanging in your home, you're not a true local._

_Step outside anywhere in the center of the county, near the sparkling Henbane River, and you're likely to catch a fine view of trees, rivers, fields, and wildflowers, the distant Whitetail Mountains something out of a Bob Ross painting. Deer scatter in herds, and bears stalk close behind in the woods._

_A giant statue of a man holding a Bible looms over all creation, from a place recently dubbed 'Angel's Peak'. Not North Korea, not Nazi Germany, but here. Right here. In America's heartland._

_That's right. You heard me correctly. There's a statue of a religious cult leader, put down right in the middle of the county, as if by God's own hand. But I suspected there was more than divine intervention at work. My suspicions were confirmed, when I met the mysterious, charismatic, intense man known as Joseph Seed for the first time._

Joseph pauses, his hand on the glossy paper. He remembers the journalist who wrote this article: a young college grad with purple hair, her arms covered in sleeve tattoos of sirens, beautiful women, and birds. He'd brought Faith with him to the interview, to sit down and discuss things at their first church location in the Henbane. Having a pretty face always helped when outsiders came, sticking their noses in his family's business. He'd rightly suspected, from reading the journalist's past magazine articles (and having John pry into her social media) that she preferred the company of women. Dark-haired ones, specifically. So, he'd brought Faith along, had her do plenty of smiling and hand-touching, as he answered the journalist's questions, watching a flush steadily rise to her face each time his Faith showed her any attention.

Lana, his first Faith, had been a raven-haired beauty, and had cast her spell all-too well. She knew a thing or two about seduction, having worked as a a low-end escort before he'd found her and cleaned her up. It only took two weeks for that journalist to fly back to Montana and join Eden's Gate. Lana had that kind of charm over people, especially women. The journalist became a powerful Priestess. But she had gotten too close to his Faith. Rumors that they were spending a lot of time together, alone, after services or after touring a bliss crop plantation, spread like the common cold. Eventually, he'd investigated those 'rumors' and found out for himself.

And Lana, for all her beauty, all her faith in him, and her lover met their untimely demise at the rocky, steep foot of Angel's Peak. They had committed suicide. A lovers' pact. Or so the rumors said.

Joseph never put much stock in rumors.

He uses his pocket knife and cuts out a photo of him and Lana, who is standing demurely by his side, smiling, not a him, but at the person taking the photo. He tucks it into his book. 

Joseph turns the lights down, signaling it's 10 p.m. That night would be one of the longest in Ava's life. She stares at the book corner, peeking out from behind her pillow, and shudders. She waits until she can hear Joseph pacing in his room, followed a half-hour later by the squeak of mattress springs. Whatever he is mulling over, she hopes it's not about her. His little art project on his bedroom walls hasn't gone unnoticed, and she is starting to worry he might be going insane.

She waits, listening, and finally lifts her mattress and picks up a bottle of pills. She'd swiped them from the armory, using Boomer as a distraction. It's nothing but over-the-counter cold medicine, the kind that makes you drowsy and puts you on your ass for day if you take more than two or three. She unscrews the cap and looks down at the blue gelatin capsules.

God, but they look like candy. She glances up, at an old Coleman gun poster on the wall. 'Easy to use!' it declares, with a happy mom, dad, and son holding up his new Christmas rifle.

She puts the cap back on the bottle. Hesitates, finger tapping plastic. She knows she shouldn't. Between her sister's death and Faith's sob story, she has more than a few reasons to stay away. But they never had problems _quite_ like what she was dealing with now. Aside from the occasional whiskey bender, the occasional half a pack of Camels, the occasional romp in a stranger's bed (or bunker) followed by an early-morning getaway, she's resisted reaching to a bottle, a syringe, for relief. So many folks around her had given in, sacrificing everything they had, but she had soldiered on. Fought the good fight and turned the other cheek. It had been easy to do with an addict for a sister, all the unanswered texts and missed calls, the deleted voicemails asking for money, asking how their mother was doing in the hospital, reminding her what drugs did to people, even your own siblings, reducing them to begging shells of the people they once were...

This, though. This is one war she knows she can't win. She's fought long enough.

Dumping five capsules into her palm, Ava dry swallows them, and shoves them back under the mattress.

* * *

"What drugs are you taking?" Joseph jumps down her throat, before she can even swallow the first bite of her cereal.

"Ain't on any drugs. High on life, maybe," she answers flatly, and coughs once. "Not drugs."

They're sitting at the infernal kitchen table, the source of all her woes and misery. The book of Joseph is open in front of her, inviting her to dive in and take a plunge. She's still content to sit way back on the ledge of her chair, listening to the walls giggle, the circus lights whisper. The pills are still working their magic, and she feels calm and sedated. The way a mammoth probably does, after it gives up struggling in the black, icy tundra waters and just lets go, sinking, all that power and life, _sinking..._

"You've got dark circles under your eyes. Your pupils are dilated," Joseph says, pointing at her. "What did you _take,_ Deputy?"

She goes silent. He shoves his chair back and storms to her room, ripping the sheet door aside, and searches it, top to bottom. Comes up empty, though he does note the book she's reading when he moves her pillow. He thinks maybe he's being too hard on her, but the little voice in the back of his head tells him otherwise, and he knows he must persist. Yes, she had taped her wrists and made a show of caring for herself. That didn't mean she couldn't be having self-destructive thoughts. That book she was reading wasn't helping.

 _Have faith,_ his wife's voice echoes, seemingly from the hallway. Joseph shuts his eyes a moment and says a quick prayer to himself. He'll be damned if he relinquishes all the power to this nonbeliever. She doesn't get to manipulate him like this.

"Don't you trust me by now?" Ava simpers, when he returns to the kitchen. She's eating a bowl of Cheerios with the last of the soy milk. Dutch may have been a hotblooded American, but he had a sensitive tum-tum. She chuckles into her spoon.

"Ava." Joseph points at the open Bible. "Here. _Right_ here. Lying is a sin. It does nothing but prolong our suffering."

She sucks saliva from her bottom lip, hoping to spit on the book, but comes up dry.

"Who'sh that in th' picture?" she slurs through a mouthful of cereal, when Joseph moves his new bookmark to the table.

"The first Faith," he answers, fingers lingering on the in-color photo, bliss flowers dangling in the background. "Lana."

She squints comically and takes a good look, making sure it's a different woman from the Faith she knew: Rachel Jessop. Sweet, seductive Rachel Jessop and her toxic promises.

She snorts. "Went through a couple of 'em, didn't you? Whats'a matter, they get bored of suckin your dick, livin the high life?"

He constricts like a snake at her vile accusation, and she sits back. Even in her stupor, she can sense when her insults jab too deep.

"Just don't speak," he suggests, winded. "How about that?"

She smiles dreamily. "That's gonna make my confession a whole lot harder."

"You need to sober up, before you do any confessing. If you're hiding drugs, Ava, sooner or later God will reveal them to me."

"Okay, _Dad._  Thanks."

He doesn't return her sarcasm with anything. Bored, she stands up and goes to leave, but he blocks her.

"Sit down."

"Why?"

"Because we're not finished for today."

"You said I gotta sober up. Maybe I'll take a year-long nap."

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Means I wanna wake up when this is _oooover,"_ she drawls, waving a hand all around. "Sleep through the end of the world. Like Cheeseburger n' winter. Come up in the springtime, you n' me, if we haven't killed ourselves by then, hand-in-hand..."

She laughs raucously at that image. Joseph watches her display with his arms folded, thinking. Observing.

"Then, haha! Then we skip through fields, right? Like Faith and smell the-"

She falls over, stumbling into the table.

"-daisies."

He steadies her, and guides her back in the chair. When she's talkative, he knows not to shut her up. It's her long, stormy silences he dreads.

"Are you finished?" he asks.

She answers him by depositing her head neatly into her bowl of Cheerios.

When she brings it up, he wipes the cereal from her face, repressing the urge to shove the napkin down her throat. Her lids are almost completely lowered, but she seems to have regained some of her coherence.

"'What you want'," she repeats, to herself. "Feh. I know."

"What?"

"But I'm not gonna _be_ some gussied-up  _housewife,_ or whatever, like your Faith," she babbles, talking to herself, as he has stepped away for the moment. "I never _was_ a proper kinda lady. And religion don't sit right with me, like Dutch's dairy problem. 'Scuse me, _ex_ -problem. And to be honest, Father, your twinkle-toe fairy princess killed a _lotta_  good people. My friends included."

Joseph stiffens, cautioning, "You should talk about the dead with more respect, Deputy."

Ava sees an opening to hurt him, and growls, "I got no respect for that no-good, needle lovin, lying, junkie _bitch_ who got what she-" 

She falters, remembering the dead. Not her friends. Not Faith, either. From behind her, Joseph preps something he's taken from the infirmary, over the counter. He sticks it in his pocket and hands her a mug of coffee.

'BIG HUG MUG', it says. Just like the one Deputy Reid drank out of...

"Drink this. It'll bring you back," Joseph instructs, cutting through her daze.

She glares at him like he's an idiot. "I've been here, the whole time!"

He takes a second to consider that statement.

"Yes, you have. And you've learned and accomplished so little."

"You don't like me," she blurts out. Blunt. Honest, the way the right chemicals can make someone honest.

"It doesn't matter if I like you or not, child."

"But you _don't._ Just _say_ it. Say 'Ava Morandi, I hate your guts'. Do it! It'll make you feel better." Her head sags against her chest, and Joseph reaches for the thing in his pocket. Reconsiders.

When she brings her head up once more, he checks her pulse. At his fingers on her neck, she giggles, and nuzzles against his hand. He freezes in place as her lips brush the sensitive skin between thumb and forefinger.

"Not the cold-blooded lizard you expected?" she says, eyeing him. "You're keepin your fingers there a _bit_  longer than usual. You wanna check my temperature, doc?"

Joseph feels her forehead, if only to move his hand from her lips, and she giggles again. Then he takes his hand away entirely.

"Why do you reject faith?" he redirects. "What do you believe in, Ava?"

_....Ava._

_...........Ava._

She's already off to the races. Her head sinks back down, down into the cold, black depths. He carries her into her room and leaves her there, letting her sleep. For now.

* * *

Joseph doesn't mean to get distracted, but the dog starts scratching at the armory door. Incessantly. Something cracks, and he leaves the room.

He checks on Boomer, then inspects a few locks. He scours the infirmary for any bottles he may have missed, but they are all stored away. He unlocks the armory and sorts through the medicine bottles, but the worst stuff, the heavy-duty painkillers and tranqs, are all accounted for. That doesn't mean she couldn't have gotten a hold of something, while he was distracted.

 _Damn it!_ He slams his fists on the table full of medicine bottles, rattling them. His crucifix gouges a dent in his fist. Despite his reputation, Joseph isn't the sort of man who's prone to violence. It takes a lot to bring it out of him, unleash that righteous fury, and right now, he is courting temptation. He is close. Dangerously close.

When he runs back into her room, she's gone. The sheet has been torn down. With a bolt of fear, he grabs his gun off his hip and dashes for the bathroom, the only unlocked room with a door, sure she has locked herself inside, a razor to her wrist at that very moment. But he slams the door open, to find it empty.

He runs into the hall, around the corner, calling her name. Boomer is whimpering and scratching somewhere in front of him. He rounds the next corner, by the entrance, and stops. Ava has dragged Dutch's body and is pulling weakly at the door hatch. The door leading outside, into the planet-wide furnace.

"STOP!"

Ava hears Joseph bellow something, but she's blinded by panic. Dutch's body reeks through the trash bags, and the dog growls at it.

"Have to get out!" she wails, clawing at the hatch handle. It screeches and moves to one side. The door groans a warning. For an insane moment, Joseph wants her to open it.

"We gotta bury him! Don't you understand? It isn't right to keep him in garbage bags! People aren't trash! You don't just throw them AWAY!"

Delirium. It's delirium. She can't be reasoned with.

Joseph pulls his gun. It hasn't been two weeks. She could let in toxic air, her hand a hair's width from opening that door.

His hand trembles, and he holsters it. He makes a run for her instead.

"I have to go _OUTSIDE!"_ she screams, and her arm jerks on the door. "The book! Oh God, the book..."

Boomer barks wildly, but doesn't interfere.

Joseph reaches her, grabs her in a bear hug, yanking her away from the still-closed door. She's whipping her head back and forth, and cracks him in the nose, fresh blood running down his chin.

"I want out! You can't keep me here! Let me OUT!"

She's crying like a child now, throwing a tantrum. It's the drugs, he knows, but something else has upset her. For her to be this stupid...

"You CAN'T!" he snarls, shoving her into the lockers in the next room. "You just CAN'T!"

They rattle as she slams into them, harder than he'd meant to. He grabs her by the shoulders, pinning her between himself and the lockers, keeping her from falling.

"I don't care!" she cries, sobbing. She lowers her head into his chest, her tears mixing with his sweat. "I don't care. It's pointless. Don't you _see_ that? You're not an idiot. I know you've thought about this. I KNOW."

She's inconsolable. She shoves against him, tripping for the door, and nearly breaks free of his grasp. 

"I threw her AWAY. I ignored her, instead of getting her help," she moans. "I treated her like _trash._ My own sister...oh, GOD...and then I...Faith...she-"

Her words fall away, back down her throat, and she starts to choke. Joseph's eyes widen in understanding. He pulls her arm, and she falls to the ground. He descends on her, and takes a needle from his pocket. Boomer gnashes his fangs and rattles off barks behind him. Ava is seizing, thrashing her entire body, fighting like a fish out of water. He sticks the needle in her neck, and it's over.

The plunger goes down. He doses her, not with an antidote, but with pure bliss. Dutch had a copious supply, and one of the first things he'd done, upon usurping the bunker and murdering him, was hide it away. Secrets, secrets.

Ava goes out like a light, sinking, not into cold water, not to her death, just into his arms.

* * *

 "My sister was a junkie," Ava reflects, softly. "Just like Faith was. I let them both die."

She pauses, and helps Joseph lower Dutch's body into a plastic coffin. After some thorough searching, they'd discovered the FEMA-style containers hidden behind stacks of junk. There were others: larger ones, for Dutch's son and daughter-in-law, and a tiny coffin for their son. The old man had really thought of everything.

 _Christ._ She shudders. She keeps speaking, finding comfort in her own voice, and now feels like a time for talking.

"She wanted to be an artist, but times got tougher on her. They were already tough, with our upbringing and all that. She used heroine. It didn't use her. Just kinda...crept up on her."

Joseph would rather she tell him about it when he isn't maneuvering a heavy, bloated corpse into a tight space, but he lets it slide. They shut the gray lid and clamp it down, effectively sealing Dutch off from the rest of the world, for good. He wonders if he isn't better off in one of those things.

"Is that why you stopped?" he asks, leveling his gaze to hers. "When you were ranting about Faith, at the table? You were thinking about your sister?"

"I can't really remember," she admits, sheepish, standing over the coffin. She turns to him, blushing. Ashamed, but meeting his eyes. "Thank you, for stopping me from runnin outside. I dunno what the hell I was thinkin. Lost my marbles for a sec."

Her thanks refills his somewhat depleted ego, and Joseph drinks it up. He steps closer to her, keeping his hands clasped in front of him as they hold a vigil with candles over the coffin. It's not quite a funeral, but he senses this is what Ava needs. Maybe he's been needing it, too.

"Tell me about her."

"Her name was Emma-Lee," Ava starts, sniffling. Her eyes are bloodshot. Glassy. "She moved with us, out to California, when Mama left my dad for good."

"Because of his drinking?"

"Yes. And other things..."

"My father chose a bottle to hide in, as well," Joseph sympathizes, perfectly. "He was a brute, who once beat me for...well, it doesn't matter. Our family split, and it was for the best."

Ava looks at him, curious. It's the first time she's ever shown any consideration for him, other than the small apology about his wife. "Your dad was an alcoholic?"

"He abused it, when it suited him. He abused a lot of things."

"Damn. Sounds like yours n' mine must have went to the same fraternity."

Joseph lifts his head, into the overhead lights. "I turned to a bottle after my wife died. It took a long, long time to crawl back out. One of the things that helped me was Lana."

 _Things,_ Ava keeps her eyes on the coffin now.  _Not people. Tools._

"She was suicidal herself. Addicted to pills. I helped her see," Joseph says, remembering. "We helped each other back up on our feet. I wanted Eden's Gate to be about purifying people. Freeing them of their sins. By helping her, she found a new home. A reason to live. But there was still weakness. In the end, the...weakness killed her."

He falls silent, shutting his eyes, and she thinks she can see tears, but she isn't sure. Ava gets a chill suddenly, and shivers. The candle flames dance and their shadows warp along the walls.

"You go on," he says finally.

Ava does, more so for her sister's memory, than for him: "Emma, she wasn't sensitive or anything. Not like John. Ah, I mean...sorry."

"It's all right."

"She could be more stubborn than me, believe it or not. I tried to get her to stop shootin up. But other things were happening, with our sick mother, with the police force-"

 _Oh yes, they were_ , Joseph thinks.  _Weren't they, Deputy? But that's another nut to crack._

"I let her go and do her thing. Even when Papa died and then Vinnie," Ava's voice fails her. She clears her throat. "So close together. I always thought she'd be all right, you know?"

"She succumbed?"

"OD'd. In a junkie house, not far from her apartment." She wipes her eyes again on her sleeve. "I burst in and found her. The cops tried to stop me from goin in, but I wasn't havin it. Graffiti and trash everywhere. That shitty dub-step music. Glitter. Glow sticks. Like they were celebratin death in there. I was the first to hold her. She was just crumpled. On the bathroom floor, like she was sleepin or fending somethin off. And I..."

She can't finish, swallowing years of pain down. Joseph waits patiently.

"The way she looked at me sometimes, when she was coming down from a high, all cozy-like, reminded me of Faith. The one I met, anyway."

"Rachel was a very special woman," Joseph mourns, sincere. "I miss her. Every day. She loved our family, though she started as an outsider."

A wave of clarity washes over Ava, and she can remember Faith's--Rachel's--pleas during their final confrontation. Killing her in a bliss-induced dream had been more of a nightmare. Her memories of her sister had spurred her onward. She hadn't been fighting Faith, but her own anger, her anger at the drugs. Joseph realizes this too, and he feels the clamp on his heart give. Ava was reliving trauma dealing with Faith. She had probably relived other traumas dealing with his brothers, but he's not ready to go there yet with her. He can't forgive her for their deaths, no matter how hard he tries.

And then...

"Wait a sec." Ava's eyes narrow. "She was _afraid_ of you. She told me things."

Joseph frowns. A cloud falls across her face again, and she can't remember what she was going to say. He puts a hand on her shoulder, turning her, gently, away from the coffin. Toward him.

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" he asks. He thumbs his rosary, letting it dangle between them.

She shrugs, thinking it's a weird question. "No."

"Neither do I." He takes a bliss flower from his pocket, and lets her lay it on the coffin. "When someone is gone, they're gone for good, until we meet them again in the Promised Land."

"Heaven," Ava corrects. "You mean up in Heaven."

"Heaven can be a place on Earth. It doesn't have to be so far away," he murmurs.

"Eden's Gate?"

He nods.

She takes a bliss flower from her own pocket and lays the second one on Dutch's coffin.

"We could say a prayer," she suggests. "For my sister. For Faith."

Joseph breathes down in relief, "You mean it?"

Ava reaches out and puts her hands on his, the one with the crucifix. She doesn't care that she doesn't believe. It just feels like the right thing to do.

"Yes. For all those that died, we should."

She grips him tightly. He places his free hand on top of hers, gentle.

"Heavenly Father," he begins. He prays, and to his credit, it's a beautiful prayer. Or maybe that was just the residual bliss in her system talking. Ava wouldn't know. She shuts her eyes and goes along with it, feeling a sense of peace wash over her. It's a feeling she has only known in glimpses, alone, hiking with Peaches and Jess in the Montana wilderness, or wrapped up in the company of her Resistance friends (before she had turned some of them against her, towards the end). It came to her when she had been in John's arms, and felt like she finally belonged somewhere.

But, like those other moments, it's there and gone, in a few heartbeats. The guilt settles back in, like a creeping frost in November. She remembers Joseph is standing next to her, and opens her eyes. She takes her hands away from his.

She's never felt more clear. Maybe something in that prayer took. Maybe she's a fool, she tells herself. Prayer isn't real. It doesn't work, a placebo at best...

They stow the coffin in a remote corner of the bunker, until they can open the hatch door. Only a few more days until the two-week marker passes.

In the meantime, Joseph has plenty of other doors he intends on wrenching open.


	5. Weak of Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joseph turns to Jacob's memory for strength, seeing eerie similarities between his older brother and his nonbeliever. Ava fights to escape the bunker, but, trapped in a bliss-induced haze, demons stalk her around every corner, and they don't want her to leave just yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-consensual drug use ahead! Just a fair warning. Mentions of childhood trauma too.

"You got nothin on me."

Ava drops Dutch's folder at Joseph's feet with a thud.

Papers spill out all over the floor, most of them files with black bars across the redacted text, along with a few newspaper articles she's already read. That had been after turning in her gun and badge to her lieutenant, weeks before her transfer to Montana. Back then, she'd had plenty of time to kill, awaiting her fate, watching every broadcast, reading every article about the shootout. Holed up in her apartment, she'd felt like a dead woman hovering above her own funeral. And she was fucking _sick_ of funerals. Eventually, she'd remembered she didn't care too much for fiction, and she had lit the newspaper articles on fire.

She considers it, if nothing else, practice for when she threw Joseph's flaming book off the edge of his statue. Good riddance to bad press.

Boomer sniffs at the files eagerly, always by her side. Joseph regards her with calm clarity.

"Knew you were bluffing," she adds.

"I expected you to read that a lot sooner," Joseph says. Only one day left until the two week marker passes, and he knows escape is the only thing on her mind.

"Yeah, well, you kept me busy." Her hands brace against her hips, traces of bone peeking over the hem as her shirt rides up. She's wearing the dead son's wife's clothes: a scoop-necked white t-shirt with a faded, black Jack Daniels logo, skinny jeans, and gray Chuck Taylor's. She takes a sneaker and kicks the paper stack, scattering files like dead leaves.

"You were gonna try and use this shit as blackmail, to get me to what? Behave?" She laughs her husky laugh, triumphant. Short, derisive. "Convert? Pathetic! I can't wait for these next twenty-four hours to pass. You have NO idea."

"Then you'll open the door?" he asks, stroking his beard with his free hand. If he's upset by her little discovery, he shows no sign. "You'll leave?"

"The book says it's safe, after two weeks. The radiation dips significantly. Come tomorrow, Boomer and I are outta here. And just you try n' stop me."

Joseph watches her brush past him, an icy wall put up between them. Boomer pants at him once, before darting ahead of Ava.

"You think that's wise?" he calls. She has no rebuttal. She's taken to ignoring almost everything about him, treating him like a ghost, even when he's reading to her. Joseph grips his metal cross tightly. He's been nothing but patient and open, but times are changing. Rapidly. He kneels, searching the pile for the only document that isn't blacked out: a psych-ward evaluation. The same one John had found online.

He reads aloud, to her back, as she walks away:

"Patient has recurring nightmares of the scene and isn't sleeping. She suffers from PTSD from the recent incident, as well as past trauma she's hinted at, but won't divulge to the therapist, despite our assurances that all information is confidential."

"Yeah, so much for that," Ava mutters. She pauses, then keeps walking. Boomer looks up, as if expecting to hear a sudden command to attack the tall, shirtless man behind him.

"Patient refuses to cooperate and take her medication," he continues, louder. "We are concerned for her mental state and feel she is not fit to return to her duties. We recommend she stay another month. Her partner's death, so close to her father's and siblings' deaths, has taken a toll on her mental state. Numerous unaddressed traumas at this time. Ms. Morandi does not seem to have any coping mechanisms, or to have given them much consideration. No religion on file. No emergency contacts."

She holds up her middle finger, about to round the corner.

"Your partner died, Deputy!" Joseph finishes, letting the paper drift to the floor. "I can read between the lines, and so could John. When are you going to tell me what _really_ happened to Ramirez?"

Her sneakers screech as she stops suddenly. The messy bun atop her head sags a little. A few loose coils of dark hair trail down her neck. He tries not to stare too long at them, knowing this woman is dangerous. To think of her as anything but a hopeless sinner might be detrimental to his health.

"That's all dead and buried," she tells him softly, turning around and folding her arms against her chest. Her breasts collect together and form a line as she does so, and after a few seconds, he averts his eyes to her serious ones. "Your 'prophecy' saw to that."

"True. But nothing ever really dies." He steps on the papers, approaching her. "Sin manifests like a virus, waiting to break out when your defenses are low. Guilt drives us to do unspeakable things. I know this."

He points to her with the rosary hand, the weird cross dangling on its tether. "I didn't even read the worst things in that report. Binge drinking. Reckless behavior, getting into fights at bars, beating on low-level drug dealers. Waking up in a puddle of your own vomit, even. You may not have ended up an addict like your sister-"

"Careful, _Father_ ," she growls. "I don't insult your dead siblings. You don't bring up mine."

"-but you act like the thugs you hated and hunted down. You brought that hatred _here,_ to my family. Look where it's got us."

"So the end of the world is my fault now?"

"You should have listened to Whitehorse and walked away."

"Wonderful."

Ava growls, cursing, and pushes the sheet aside to her room, flopping down on her bed. She doesn't need his guilt trip. Whatever blame was to be placed on her, the weight was ten times as much for him. Her family may have been criminals, addicts, dysfunctional as anything, but they were nothing compared to the Seeds. How could they justify themselves?

"They can't. He can't," she mutters, under her breath, her head in her hands. She rubs at her temples, wishing she could clear the fog that's been plaguing her since she took the pills.  _Might have overdone it, this time. Don't remember ever having a hangover last this long. Don't remember cold pills causing green vision, either. It's almost like..._

Joseph peels the sheet curtain aside, leaning in the doorway. He's got something clutched in his hand: a photo.

Her head shoots up. "You know how to knock? Not done tryin to convert me, huh?" She smirks. "Guess you still got a day to figure it out."

He only stares down at the photo, his other hand wedged in his back pocket.

"God, you remind me of him so much," he sighs.

 _Who?_ She squints, but there's no need. He places a photo of Jacob, the one from Dutch's map, on her mattress. There's a big, red 'x' drawn in permanent marker through his stern, handsome, scarred face. Ah, Jacob. The decorated war veteran. She hates to admit it, but his mind control 'maze' had been the most therapeutic thing she'd participated in. Much better than the the circle of chairs and sobbing patients she'd been forced to sit through, back in LA. It was too bad Jacob hadn't learned his lesson about messing with nature: you couldn't fuck with her, and expect her not to bite back. And Ava had been the fangs.

Joseph watches her stare at the photo, wondering what she's thinking about. The similarities are remarkable. His older brother, his and John's protector, who had fought and suffered and been at the edge of despair. His dead comrade, Miller. Ava, with her dead siblings and trauma, fighting her own battles against his people, and then there was the late Deputy Ramirez. The puzzle he's putting together is starting to come into focus. But much of her is still an enigma.

"I remind you of Jacob?" she asks, almost offended. "How?"

"Things...repeat themselves," he says. "Time is a flat circle, Ava."

She freezes. "I...think I heard that somewhere, once before. Where did you hear it?"

"Just something a man once said to me, during a revival tour in Louisiana," he recalls, eyes drifting to the ceiling, as they so often do. "A man who came to our tent and spoke of Carcosa and a Yellow King. He drifted through our camp, one rainy day. Talking to our women, mostly. Sniffing out weakness, those who would run for the promise of an easier paradise. Jacob caught wind of him first. Said the stranger reeked, something decaying in his soul. He had the man sent away. Jacob always looked out for us like that."

Ava shivers all of a sudden, recalling a similar encounter with a homeless man in LA. He'd been wandering through a wealthy suburb, eating people's garbage, scaring the kids, muttering to himself. When she'd confronted him, he'd screamed at her about the Yellow King and "the spiral kingdom in the sky", saying she would join him there, sooner or later.

"Did you have anyone looking out for you?" Joseph sits on the edge of the mattress, the depression caused by his weight making her uneasy. "And I'm not talking about the police."

She can only shake her head 'no'. He takes something out from his pocket, but she's too transfixed by incoming memories, by Jacob's likeness, to notice. Though, the downy hairs on her arms are prickling, trying to alert her to the imminent danger. Prickling, as they had when that homeless man had looked her dead in the eyes. ( _You're with me in Carcosa! You wanna arrest a man for tryin to eat? Fuck you! Fucking pig!)._ Right before he'd pulled a knife on her, and she'd had to use every cell in her body to avoid shooting him.

A year later, and her cells had given everything they had to shoot the men in the warehouse trying to kill her, her partner.

_You are weak._

She remembers just how weak, collapsed in a ball in the hospital bed afterwards. No cops there to talk to her yet, get her side of the story. Just handcuffs and heart monitors (not hers, she hadn't been hurt) and the unique hospital smell of impending death and chemicals.

Waking up in Jacob's cage had felt similar. So had waking in the prison, coming out of Faith's bliss coma. Things repeating themselves...but why? Why did she constantly seek to relive these traumas?

To her left, Joseph preps a syringe, a small amount of bliss dribbling to the floor.

_Cull the herd._

The press had called it an 'all out bloodbath'. Revenge by the cartels against crooked LAPD cops. Multiple gangsters shot dead and one dead police deputy, a charity man who had wanted to bring his family over the border. Or that was what the cover-up story said.

Looking back, if she hadn't gone through that whole ordeal, she might not have survived Jacob's 'training'. The man had been ruthless with her, pushing her to her body's limits with starvation and physical agonies.

Boomer runs into the room, sees the tall man fiddling with something by his side, while his human stares at a piece of shiny paper.

_You're a warrior._

Eventually, once the details were in, she'd been hailed as a sort of hero. She had saved one of the hostages, a young drug dealer, in over his head. Her lieutenant guessed the actual truth, but, for his own reasons, he pulled every resource known to him, just to get her transferred to Montana. She was a sharp-shooter, too high-strung for city life, jumping at shadows. Life in the slow country would temper her. Or so they'd thought.

That was before the cult. Before any of this madness. Ava touches Jacob's face with two fingers, remembering their final moments together...

Boomer lets out a low woof and a growl.

She looks up, but it's too late. Joseph grabs her by the hair, yanking her to her side, exposing her neck. Shouting her surprise, she balls her hands into fists, preparing to crush his nose against her knuckles, but something pricks her arm.

"I'm sorry. You leave me no choice. This is for your own good. I can't let you leave."

_Leave..._

_....Leave...._

_.......Leave._

The green tint at the edge of her vision intensifies into violent, minty clouds. 

"Oh, you bastard," is all she can groan, before her eyes roll into her head, and she sags into his arms. She surrenders to the bliss without much fuss.

Boomer growls, but doesn't move. He licks Ava's fingers, as Joseph lays her out on the mattress. He picks up the photo of Jacob. The red 'x' is an insult to his memory, a gleeful mark Dutch had drawn when Ava had finally executed him. Joseph knows the details of his brother's death, knows Jacob tried to shoot her like she was a backyard rabbit in his garden. Mistakes were made on both sides, but that doesn't change the fact that his older brother lies dead, his murderer moaning lightly in her sleep in front of him.

"I need you," he murmurs, finger tracing along Ava's soft, vulnerable throat. Boomer woofs a low, warning note.

"Jacob. Help me to be strong. Help me remember..."

_"Thank you for coming on such short notice," the homeless shelter director said, his Georgian accent thick as apple jam. He took his clipboard and tucked it under one arm. Joseph had a copy of his book tucked under his own gray suit-jacket, but the two men couldn't be any more night and day in appearance and personality. The director was big, burly, ebony-skinned, with a shining, bald head and pearl-white smile. Joseph was reserved, gray, pale and cold, but animated. The other man, standing by his side, was a fashionable alternative to Joseph, dressed in a vest, leather boots, a blue silk shirt, and designer jeans._

_They introduced themselves to him just outside the shelter. Rome's only homeless shelter was a converted high school gym that, judging by the crumbling brick, the overgrown ivy, looked like it still had asbestos in the walls. It was a sweltering June day, the locusts hissing in the trees. The question of AC in the building didn't even pop into their minds._

Seem like they're Mormons _, the director thought._  Gonna have to watch em, round the guys. No solicitations. But they look harmless enough.

_"We came as soon as we heard there was trouble," Joseph told him._

_"We can go over all that in a second," the director said, nodding. "Ya'll his family?"_

_"Had I known he was here, I would have come a lot sooner," Joseph finished, ignoring the question. No blame in his voice , but the director detected his distress._

_"Ya'll said you're from Rome?" he asked. He looked from one blue-eyed man to the other. Brothers, he'd bet his prized lawnmower on it. "No accents. You sure you are who you say you are?"_

_The other one, John, beamed at the director. A PR smile if he'd ever seen one. Probably melted a lot of hearts. Although, he didn't care for the hipster vest. Dude looked like he should be tending bar some place in Atlanta, serving cocktails he couldn't afford on his modest salary._

_"Oh, we're local, I assure you," John said, raising a heavily tattooed hand. The director quirked a brow. Religious types and tattoos normally didn't go together, at least not in that county. "Our family split when we were young, before the accent could stick."_

_"I'm very sorry to hear that." The director hitched up his pants, crossing his meaty arms over his barrel chest. John sized him up as an ex-football player, though he looked like he hadn't played since high school. Judging by the wedding ring, the quiet confidence in his posture, he doubted this man could be converted to their side. They would have to be cautious around him. Joseph was carrying himself reserved, his leader's presence muted for the moment. John took his brother's lead, shoving his hands in his pockets._

_"You're gonna stick your arms out again, in a sec," the director warned. "We'll search you, when we get inside. Contraband, weapons. Harry Potter. Stuff like that."_

_"Books, too? Seems unusual for a shelter," Joseph observed. He exchanged looks with John. Both of them had a set of aviators perched on their heads, like a second pair of eyes._

_"It is," the director nodded, wiping sweat from his brow with a blue handkerchief. "But the owners insist. They don't want so much as 'outside literature' smuggled in. Don't want minds contaminated while folks are stayin. Fiction is especially prohibited."_

_"This place isn't state funded?" John asked, surprised._

_"Tuttle Foundation bought it out, few years back," the director explained. Joseph and John could tell by the creases in his pinched face that he wasn't a fan. "Evangelical bunch, out of Louisiana. Friends and family of the governor. Friendly enough people. Pay's decent, if you don't mind me sayin so. You heard of em?"_

_"Oh, we've heard of them," John said, rubbing the bridge of his nose once. "They approached us and offered to take us under their mantle. Join their ministry."_

_"That so?" The director seemed to be looking for more. He was growing more curious about them by the second._

_"Their message doesn't-," John searched for the politically correct word, "-_ mesh _with ours, if you will. Differences of philosophy."_

_The director grunted, not caring for such discussions. Joseph went as far as to lower his head and pray softly. "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ."_

_"Uhh, yeah," the director paused, looking from one man to the other. "You ain't with any church, then? We get your type here almost every day. Parishioners, looking to add more lost souls to the flock."_

_"It's just one soul we're after today," Joseph said. "Please, if you'll see us inside. I'm anxious to speak with him."_

_As they went through the rusty double doors, the director turned back to the two. "You his kin?"_

_"His brothers," John answered, eyes shifting around the entrance._

_"I knew it. Something in the eyes."_

_The director had them searched via metal wand. He held Joseph's Bible for him, and did a double take at the title. Not a Bible, but something else. And the tattoos. The weirdness. These men were not with any Christian organization, but something other. His heartburn suddenly started acting up. He handed the book back to Joseph, figuring there was no harm in it and not wanting to separate a religious man from his book of faith (whatever the hell his was)._

_John, ever the appraiser, surveyed their surroundings. The place was outfitted almost like a prison, with a security guard behind a barred desk. Scattered benches and old, faded posters, a dusty fake plant and peeling paint on the walls. The type of place people wanted to move on from, and fast. Perfect for a steamroller organization or mega-church to come along and pick up people_ en-masse _. Yet Jacob had seen fit to stay there for months, without bothering to contact any family._

_John was relatively new to his brother's cause, but he was already seeing signs. He exchanged looks with Joseph again. They needn't say anything, each man having the same thoughts. By the time they got to the beds, occupied by almost a hundred homeless men, they each had the same thought: this place could be of great use to Eden's Gate. If they could somehow wrest it from the grip of a giant like Tuttle._

_But, for now, their purpose was fixed to Jacob._

"Where you goin, Jackrabbit?"

Ava's father's voice drifts after her into the hallway, cutting through the haze of green and white lights. She's wriggled free of her restraints, and is crawling along the metal grate. The jackrabbit tramp stamp on her lower back peeks from under her shirt. She's caught in an iron burrow, and the farmer has sealed off the entrance.

"I'm gettin out," she tells him, army-crawling, elbow over elbow.

Joseph watches her struggle from a distance, his eyes half-lidded. He's dosed himself with enough bliss to see what she's seeing. That's the way the serum works, the way God told him it would. He had listened and instructed his followers to create it. It hasn't let him down yet. If it could save Jacob and John, perhaps it could save her.

"Ha! You never did learn your lesson," her father's voice crows. "You ain't learned a lick a sense, girl. Not even that time I took you out in the swamp. Same place I hid that dead pedophile and his camera with you on it."

"I remember. You stuck my hands under the water," Ava growls, sweat breaking out on her brow. She moves, slow, inch by agonizing inch, but she's gonna make it, damn it! "Made me feel around in the cold blackness and mud, for what, I didn't know..."

Joseph silently watches the exchange, hearing, but not seeing. 

"I told you a story, girl. You remember it? Or are you too fucked up now to even remember your daddy's stories?"

Ava pauses, out of breath. The green clouds roll in thick. She sees Faith dance behind some shelves, but that's impossible. She put a bullet in Faith. Faith was dead. Her father was dead. That didn't mean he couldn't still talk.

"You told me about a nosy man, a man who stuck his hands in everyone's pies," she recalls. "Each time you forced my hands underwater, you told me more about the man. How he didn't care if you were a criminal or a regular Joe. He had his hands in everybody's business. One day, he stuck his hand in the wrong pie."

"Go on, girl. What happened?"

"You waited on that last part, til my hands touched something. It felt like...like a monster," Ava breathes, eyes wide. "Scaly, hard, but cold. Thought it would cut my fingers. It fought against me. You helped me yank it out of the water."

"What was it?"

"It was the biggest fuckin snapping turtle I've ever seen, all sharp claws and that massive beak opening and closing. I thought you were gonna feed my fingers to it. Then, when I was screamin, beggin you to let it go, you said to me-"

"-you stick your hand in people's business, especially people's business you don't rightly know-" her father starts.

"-eventually, somethin bites," Ava finishes. She puts her head down, against the cold floor tiles.

"You never learned that lesson. First you killed the man who was filmin you, that fuckin creep, and my brother and I had to dispose of the body in the swamp," he father says. His voice is growing fainter as Ava comes out of it. "You was just a kid, so I let it slide. I even bought you a gun. You remember me teachin you to shoot? We took pot-shots at rabbits and that's when I called you Jackrabbit. Cuz you jacked em up. But then your mama took you away-"

"-You burned me with cigarettes, you crazy old fuck," Ava snarls. "What kind of father does that?

"-took you to California and you forgot everythin. Maybe you became a cop to spite me n' my blood. Moonshiners and poachin and fencin ain't no big deal. Everyone does it. But you had to act higher and mightier n' us. Then that business with the drug dealers..."

"SHUT UP!" Ava screams. She's reached the passage leading to the hatch. Joseph is impressed with how far she's managed to wiggle. But his Deputy is no ordinary woman.

"...I gotta look up definition of 'hypocrite' to you?" her father laughs, and vanishes.

_"Look," the director stopped the brothers from wandering down the aisle of organized beds and dividers. "Before we go to him, there's stuff you should know."_

_"Like what?" Joseph asked._

_The director brought out his clipboard, licking his fingers. He lifted a page to a pink carbon copy. "I told you about some of the incidents on the phone. But that's not the half of it. He's got PTSD from the Afghanistan tour. I'm not allowed to elaborate. HIPPA compliance. He's been denied therapy three times for being aggressive."_

_"Just let us see him," John insisted._

_The director held up a hand for silence. "Now I told him, he has options, as a veteran. But he's been kicked out of too many places. He's violent. Defensive. He's always alone and rarely says a word. Just last week he beat the piss out of one of the Aryan Brotherhood. Guy took a bunk next to his and mistook Jacob for one of them. Must have been the hair. I dunno."_

_John smiled with pride, but Joseph frowned. "I'm very sorry to learn that."_

_"Don't be too sorry," the director said, in a lowered tone. "We're supposed to be impartial, but it's hard when a dude walks in with a big ass swastika on his fuckin neck."  
_

_He eyed John's tattoos a little more closely, but didn't see anything suspicious._

_"Truth be told, we were all kinda grateful that other guy got taken outta here. But it was almost by body bag."_

_"What are you saying?" John asked, sensing the director was holding something back._

_"I'm saying the faster you get your brother outta here, the better," the director finished. "He's on a fast track to disaster. That's all."_

_Joseph placed a hand on the big man's shoulder. "Thank you for telling us. You need not worry, my friend."  
_

_With that, they crossed the retrofitted gymnasium, their boot heels thudding softly against rickety, wooden boards. Jacob heard them coming or was already sitting up, his elbows resting on his knees. He was dressed in fatigues and a gray tank, dog tags and a rabbit foot hanging around his neck. His beard was overgrown, his red hair sheared, military style. Dark bags and bloodshot eyes indicated some kind of substance abuse, though alcohol was prohibited, and he didn't appear to have anything on him. Maybe it was just his own soul, poisoning him, Joseph thought. Whatever it was, the sight of his brother hunkered over on a cot in a homeless shelter, shattered and lifted the pieces of his heart at the same time._

_John ran to him first, arms open, perhaps to hug him. When he got a better look, he stopped just shy, and settled for placing his hands on his shoulders instead._

_"Jacob!" he cried. "It's so good to see you!"_

_Jacob grunted at first, not acknowledging him. Joseph thought he must have gotten used to being alone, forgetting how to interact with people. But then he looked past John to see him standing there, and recognition dawned in his eyes._

_"John," Jacob said, not moving. "You're taller than when I saw you, last."_

_"I should say so!" John removed his hands. "It's been years. Far too long."_

_Jacob only grunted again, turning to Joseph. "This your doing?"_

_He stepped up to his brother's bedside. Not many belongings on the little table by the bed. A deck of playing cards and some loose change, a pack of cigarettes. "I heard you were here."_

_Jacob nodded. John was taken aback by his brother's silence. He hadn't been expecting tears or even a hug, but he was still shocked by how distant his brother was._

_"Why?" Jacob asked._

_"Heard you were having a tough time," Joseph answered. "John and I moved back in the area."_

_"Mmm. Doing the church thing. I heard."_

_"Church thing!" John laughed. "It's much more than that. Eden's Gate is-"_

_Jacob muttered something, turning away from them. He rolled back onto the cot, showing them his back. "Had enough church people come to me. New ones every day. Don't need it."_

_"We'll come back tomorrow," Joseph said. There were so many things he wanted to tell his brother; it pained him to have to say those words, instead. John was nearly shaking, pacing back and forth. Joseph put a hand on his shoulder to steady him._

_"I'll be here," Jacob muttered._

_"You better be," John said._

_They left him, and came back the following day, to find him looking the same, which wasn't encouraging._

_"I don't need your help," was the first thing Jacob said. "The meds don't help. Therapy doesn't help. I'm...all fucked up inside, Joseph."_

_"If he can change me, he can change you," John said, hopeful. Joseph smiled lightly, then opened his book._

_"Please," Jacob growled, head in his hands. "I can't stand any more Jesus talk."_

_"Who says we're talking?"_

_Joseph looked around, then took out a vial of bliss oil from the hollowed out book. He handed_   _it to Jacob, who stashed it in his shirt pocket._

_"Give that a try. One drop will do," he instructed._

_"What is it? CBD oil?"_

_"Just try it an see."  
_

_Jacob nodded once. He had the stiff posture of an arthritic seventy-year-old. John expressed his doubts on their way out, insisting they read him scripture, but Joseph told him to have faith. The following day, Jacob didn't stay seated when they visited. He stood, life finding its way back into his limbs. Joseph gave him more instructions, then they left. On the fourth day, he opened up to them about how empty his life felt. He was searching for something. But he refused to go home with them, a stray wolf tailing after an old pack._

_They left in silent contemplation. When they got in the car, John turned on Joseph, and Joseph had to admonish his brother, something he didn't enjoy doing. When they got to the old meat-packing plant, Jacob was already there._

_"Whatever you gave me, it's working," he said, by way of greeting. He patted his pocket._

_John overflowed with happiness, grinning ear-to-ear, the way he did when he won a case in court. Another victory for Eden's Gate! The fact that it was his brother was just an added bonus. Their family had grown so huge, but nothing could replace the void in their hearts that Jacob had left._

_Joseph smiled at him, as if he'd been expecting Jacob there the entire time. As if he'd never left._

_"This is only the start. We have a long way to go. But it's time you heard the message."_

_Jacob hesitated, then stepped up to them. "I think I can give it a listen."_

_Joseph's smile broadened._

_"_ _My dear brother, that is all I ever ask of anyone."_

Ava has risen to her feet, crouching low. She navigates the bliss clouds, in search of the door. Sometimes, the bunker is a twilit, vast forest. Other times, it's the derelict warehouse, fogged over with green mist. She backtracks sometimes. Sometimes she goes in circles, talking to herself.

Joseph is a silent spectator, a wraith in the fog, or perhaps a watchful guardian.

Instead of Ava's father, a new illusion presents itself to her: her dead partner, Deputy Ramirez. There's not much special about him, and he resembles the late Marshal in more ways than one. Nothing special...other than the bullet hole in his forehead.

"Watcha doin there, Morandi?" he asks, hunkering down next to her.

"There's two cartel guys just around the corner. They're guarding our way out!" Ava hisses. "Keep your voice low. Don't give away our cover."

"Just beyond the door?" He points toward the bunker hatch.

"Yeah. On the outside. They've got masks on. They don't look like people," she mutters. Her wavy hair has worked its way loose and hangs around her shoulders, disheveled. "More like...like something inhuman. Like cryptids."

Ramirez humors her with a laugh. Blood trickles down the grooves of his nose. She doesn't appear to notice, too concerned with peeking around the corner.

"Don't laugh. They give me the creeps!"

"What do they look like?"

She turns back to him. She sees the blood, and confusion distorts her features, before she focuses on his question. "Like the bodies of men, but dressed in rags. Something's wrong with their faces. I can't see their eyes!"

"You better watch it, or you'll end up like me," Ramirez suggests, pointing to the bullet hole. "And the Marshal. And Grace. And Mary May. And Sharky. And John. And Hurk and-"

"Shhh!" Ava shakes her head. "Shut up! You don't get to talk about them!"

Joseph tilts his head, his eyes closed. He can see everything she sees, even with them shut.

"Just go away," she groans, an invisible gun sagging in her hands as she collapses against the wall. "Go away, Ramirez. You and all the others. Just stay dead."

 _A few short weeks later, the unthinkable happened._ _The police informed him his wife had been texting and driving, but the other driver was partially to blame. A tragedy, all around._ _One that, had he listened to the Voice, might not have happened. And so, alone in the house, the first thing Joseph did was take his phone out of his pocket and smash it with his own fist, until he bled._

 _"Never again, Lord," he swore, shards of the phone embedded in his fist. "I will_ never _question you again."_  

_But he would, and many times. It simply hadn't sunk in yet. The police offered to escort him to the hospital to see his infant daughter, but he refused. He told them to leave him in peace, to pray. His whole life, the police had never been anything but bad news, harbingers of a society that had failed the world. He wanted them all gone. And so they'd left him there (he wasn't exactly a local favorite, more like an eccentric quickly becoming a big, fat thorn in their side), alone, to process the news that his wife had been killed in a car accident, and his newborn daughter was in the NICU, holding on for dear life._

_The first thing he did was run to the cabinet and grab a bottle of bourbon. A gift from one of their earlier converts. He uncorked it and drained it below the halfway line easily, getting good and shit-faced, as the future Deputy Ava would have said._

_Jacob found him first, on the floor of the old house, with the puppy licking his face, whimpering. He grabbed Micah and gave the shepherd mix to a stone-faced John, who took him out in the backyard and tied him up (it would later escape and go missing, but given Joseph's treatment of his daughter in his grief, perhaps it was spared by doing so)._

_"Come on." Jacob lifted his brother off the floor, cradling him like a baby. No easy feat, seeing as he was near-dead weight._

_Joseph muttered nonsense, his face streaked with tears, beard coated in snot. His aviators were cracked and askew on his forehead. Things weren't so different from when they were children and Jacob had to defend him from their parents, from bullies._

_The back door slammed. John, returning from the yard._

_"We can't let anyone see him like this. Not when we're at these numbers. Not when we're so close to uprooting. It'll kill us."_

_Jacob glared at his brother's unusually poor choice of words. John had the most fear, and he sometimes thought he needed more discipline than Joseph dished out. Although, given how much he enjoyed torturing converts, maybe John had too much._

_"We won't," Jacob rasped. "Now help me get him upstairs."_

"Help me up the stairs, Ramirez," Ava orders. "I'm gonna waste these fuckers. We're goddamned LAPD! They can't do this to us!"

Ramirez's reply comes back fuzzy, "No can do, Ava. Seein as I got me a bad case of the dead."

She turns, to see a rotted corpse in her father's funeral clothes speaking to her, the teeth as white as tic-tacs in the rotted, blackened gums. Maggots barrel out of unhinged jaw, pouring out like rice from a cut sack. She bellows out a cry of disgust, before her legs thrash and she falls into a fevered sleep.

Joseph is standing just behind her. He is disappointed. She had gotten all the way to seeing Ramirez, but hadn't revealed the details to him. He looks at the hatch door once, then picks her up and carries her back to bed.

_Jacob, if only returning the favor to his brother for rescuing him from that homeless shelter, from his own demons, relentlessly hounded Joseph through the entire grieving process. Joseph's older brother never lost sight of what was important, not even when the hospital called, asking questions about an autopsy of the infant, something about a suspicious death. Never questioned his brother's motives. It took months, but he helped Joseph give up the bottle for good, hiding the worst of his relapses from Eden's Gate. John helped make excuses as well, saying the Father had come down with an illness after losing his beloved wife, but if they believed the harder, he would get better. They both knew that if the people had seen their precious leader, drunk as a skunk, swaying at the pulpit, they would have scattered like sheep before wolves._

_Then Lana, the first Faith, joined them, like a breath of fresh air to a drowning man. She resembled his dead wife in so many ways. Jacob knew his brother had found his belief again, and was whole. For the moment, anyway._

_And Joseph rewarded Jacob with a tremendous honor when they moved to Hope County: dominion over the White Tails, where he knew his brother would excel with his...talents. And he had. Until a certain Deputy came along._

_Before they left Rome for Hope County, their numbers grew exponentially in just one, short day._

_It happened one morning, when the director exited the homeless shelter to grab a coffee at the shop across the street. He hadn't seen them all at first, digging for his keys in his deep pocket, grumbling curses. It was only when he looked up, that he gasped, dropping his keys._

_There, standing before the shelter, were hundreds of Eden's Gate followers. All wearing the same strange cross on their clothes, the one he'd seen around Joseph Seed's hand._

_"What in the fuck?" he sputtered. "The holy hell is this?"_

_John Seed, his brother Jacob standing behind him, stood at the front of the mass of cultists. He was carrying a black briefcase.He stepped up to the director and popped it open, revealing brick after green brick of cold, hard cash. Jacob leered at him from over John's shoulder._

_"We're here to buy the shelter." John didn't say it. He stated it to him, as if the transaction had already transpired. The director looked at him like he'd sprouted additional talking heads on each shoulder._

_"The Tuttle Foundation will wanna have a word," the director said doubtfully, salivating over the money. He was also coming down with one bitch of a headache. All the chanting and singing from the cultists didn't help. They seemed ready to bust in on the place, and he grew fearful. Jacob looked to be packing some kind of gun under his army jacket._

_"They have already been_ informed, _and won't be a problem," John said, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together to signal the deal that had been made. "They instructed me to give this to you, and ask that you hand over the keys and step away. You can do that, or, my friend, you can join us, and march onward."_

_The director chortled, reaching for the suitcase. He humored the poor idiot, asking, "And where might that be?"_

_The crowd shouted all at once, ringing his poor head like a bell, and he cringed, nearly dropping the cash._

_"TO EDEN'S GATE!" they cried in unison._

_Then, the crowd parted, and Joseph strode down the middle like Moses in the sea. Jacob followed after him, the watchdog of the bunch. They walked right past the director and entered the shelter, as if it had always belonged to Eden's Gate. As if Joseph knew all this would come to pass, and had done so many times before._

_The director took the money and ran._  

Ava wakes in her own bed, lightning zapping her brain. She feels as if she's woken up from the worst nightmare imaginable, but can't remember a goddamned thing. This time, no one's here to give her a shot, and bring her completely out of the influence of the drug. Whitehorse and Tracey and the rest are gone. She's only left with the man who drugged her.

Yet, her thoughts are clear. She remembers the date. It's safe to leave. She isn't cuffed to the bed. It's safe...isn't it?

She parts the curtain to her room, peeking into the hallway. No dancing Faith is there to pull her deeper into the dream. No voices come from the walls. Only the slightest tinge of green borders her vision. She doesn't bother searching for Joseph. Boomer trots at her heels as she packs a bag full of enough supplies to keep them alive for a few days. No weapon, but it's not like there's anything to defend herself against. She shoulders the pack and heads to the lockers by the front door.

"Fuck," she mutters. Everything's locked away. Including the radiation reader. The plastic suits. The masks.

Did she take a risk and leave now, without the meter, without any protection? Or did she ask Joseph for his key?

"Not a chance in hell," she decides aloud. The book said two weeks was enough. Did she really want to turn back and ask the man who had drugged her for his damn permission?

She starts to turn the handle. The door budges, screeching, and she winces.

Joseph runs down the hallway, as if surprised to find her awake already. Boomer barks at him, and he keeps his distance as Ava wrestles with the door.

"You're really going?" he asks. "Just like that?"

"Don't...start...with me," she growls, putting her shoulder into the handle. Her arm is sore where the needle pricked her earlier. "You...don't get to talk...to me. Not anymore." 

Joseph stands back, his hands held at his sides. He had hoped, prayed, for a breakthrough. He has learned so much. He can't seem to contend with the emotions storming in his mind, his heart.  _What do I do, Lord? Do I let her go? Is that your will?_

The door creaks on its hinges. Ava pulls it open at last, and shoulders her pack. She's sweating just from that tiny exertion, weakened from two weeks without exercise or daylight.

"Ava," he calls up at her, from the bottom of the stairs.

She pushes on the double doors, ignoring him. Dust particles rain down on her shoulders, her face. Boomer paws at the doors, anxious to escape this strange-smelling, darkened place.

"Ava!"

"WHAT?" she snaps. The doors bulge against their hinges, then fall back down on her.

"I won't stop you," he tells her. He stands at the foot of the stairs, and doesn't take another step. "But you should know something."

She wheezes, "You got...about...five seconds."

"It won't be what you think." His voice booms up after her. "Nothing will be the same. God has remade the earth. We are entering a new era, but there are still demons lurking on the surface."

She flips one of the doors open with a bang. Takes a few deep breaths, collecting herself. Joseph has his hands on the lower door, preparing to close it. Solely because of all she's been through, all that has transpired because of this man, she turns around, one last time.

"And I saw the wild beast and the kings of the earth, and their armies gathered together to wage war against the one seated on the horse, and against his army," Joseph says quietly, looking up at her.

 _Let her go, Joseph._ He feels the weight of Jacob's hand on his shoulder, and feels strength flow into his body. _You have done your part, as you did for me. Now she must decide. I think this one's strong enough. She has good instincts. But we will see..._

Joseph raises his voice, "And the wild beast was caught, and along with it the false prophet that performed in front of it, the signs with which he misled those who received the mark of the wild beast, and those who worship its image. While still alive, they both were hurled into the fiery lake that burns with sulfur."

His fevered prayers follow behind her, growing fainter by the second as she climbs the last of the stairs.

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea." 

With that, he watches, through the crack in the lower door, as Ava takes her first steps into the new world, the dog following close behind her.


	6. Protection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ava and Joseph each deal with the aftermath of her leaving the shelter. But she may not be done with Dutch's island, or with Joseph yet, as she attempts to brave a new and dangerous world...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Some violence ahead, including attempted sexual violence (not by Joseph!). Wanted to give a fair warning. Things start to warm up between Ava and Joseph, mostly at the end of the chapter, so please don't get discouraged by all the initial angst and violence lol.
> 
> Also I'm so so sorry these chapters are so damn long. I try my best to shorten them but I don't want to miss any details! D;

Joseph shuts the hatch.

He waits until he's sure Ava is gone, before he slams his fist as hard as he can into the door. The metal rings with a dull note; pain shoots through his arm, but it barely registers. His lips draw back from his teeth in a silent snarl as he strikes it again, and again, each ring more hollow than the last. He beats on it until his fist is raw and bloody, leaving streaks like claw marks.

The Voice commands him to let her go; he obeys. Much as it agonizes him. Not because he'll miss her. Because it feels like defeat.

He retreats into the subterranean corridor, stopping under the florescent lights, hands at his sides. His red-capped knuckles drip blood on the concrete as he tries to process what's happened. His abdomen tenses as he draws a deep breath into his lungs, steadying himself. The woman's absence is already palpable, the way air tastes cleaner, the ions charged after a storm. It's a false sense of purification. To him, it's an emptiness.

One that mocks everything he stands for.

* * *

The world is gray.

Ava doesn't blink. There's no need. There's no sunlight to blind her, the way it had the first time she emerged from Dutch's bunker. The gut-wrenching contrast between the two worlds takes her breath away. Before, there had been vibrant, green plants. Trees. Insects, their lulling, constant drone almost hypnotic. Birds chirping and flitting between the branches. Deer. Shit-for-brains cultists, up to shenanigans farther down the island.

Now, there is only gray. The world is one big ash tray, everything blanketed by the nuclear waste. The trees are stripped of their leaves, a skeletal forest of blackened husks and skinny branches replacing what once was so lush, so full of life. She squints at the sky out of instinct. It's high noon, but the sun's completely smothered by thick clouds. It weighs down like a second ceiling and blocks all but the scantest portion of light.

She can see a faint, glowing orb way up there, also gray. Gray, gray, gray.

"This is gettin old," she mutters, her brow furrowed in a helpless gesture. Boomer turns his muzzle up to her, one ear quirked, the other flopped.

"C'mon, mutt. Let's go and see what we're-" She hates how shaky her voice sounds. The voice of a woman trying her damnedest not to freak out. "-what it is we've got to deal with."

Her boots give off no sound when she stamps prints in the ash. It's not so different from a dust storm in Arizona she'd once witnessed from a hotel window. The wall of dust had blocked out the sun, plunging everything in weird twilight. Then came the wind, the sand--tons and tons of sand--covering everything in inches of brown and white powder.

But this...this is different. It feels wrong. The anxiety starts in her stomach first, the uncanny feeling, and spreads to her veins. She holds herself close, rubbing her arms, though she isn't cold. The pack's weight tries to drag her down with each step she takes on the trail. Once they get a few hundred feet, she passes the wreckage of the burned-out truck. She stops, staring. The blackened windows are covered in ash. No way she can see inside, and she's not sure she wants to.

Joseph carried her from that truck, into the shelter. He could have left her there, to burn, with everyone else. But he hadn't. Why?

 _Cuz he wanted somebody to keep him company,_ she thinks, frowning so hard a line scars the side of her face.  _Somebody to preach to, insist he was right. I guess I should be thankful all he did was preach. Least he didn't try and 'repopulate' the earth with me._

Truth be told, he had given her some steely looks, even compassionate ones, but he had never once given her _that_ impression. Maybe he wasn't attracted to a woman like her. She scoffs aloud. There were certainly a multitude of things she didn't like about him. _Mainly the aviators. Who the fuck wears sunglasses inside?_

"Congrats," she murmurs as she walks, leaving the truck behind her. "Guess you got what you wanted."

* * *

This was bound to happen. Joseph used to think Ava was the one with a temper problem. He knows better. He'd used her as a lightning rod for his frustrations. Ava was, if anything else, a distraction from the grief and woe threatening to pull him into their riptide.

It tears him to pieces, because there are two possible outcomes: Fire, ash, and death. Or something else. Something capable of growing from the rubble. He isn't sure what, exactly, only that he has unfinished business with her. The foundation doesn't get built without them both.

No one is beyond saving _,_  he used to tell his people. He refuses to back down from that, but the Voice forced him to. He wants to be glad she's gone, and free of the burden of her conversion. Yet even now, with his chest heaving and red drops plinking to the ground, he admits to himself that her place is here, down in the earth. With him. But she's already made her choice. She never even gave things a chance! He should track her down, force her back underground, start everything over, with her bound and gagged to a chair. After a few days without food or water she won't so much as sneeze without second-guessing herself...

"So be it," he says aloud, instead. The righteous anger evaporates, for the time being. He's left it drying on the door.

All he can do is wait. He goes to the infirmary and tapes his knuckles with white gauze, the bandages blooming four red spots immediately. He wanders into Dutch's room. Turns his face to the blank section of the wall, the only space that isn't covered with Eden's Gate articles and photos. It's an etching of Dutch's that he finds interesting, weirdly poignant for the blunt, paranoid old man. 

"The world is on a diagonal. I am the balancing point," he reads aloud. An affirmation or an admission.

He swears he's heard that before, maybe in a journal or magazine, somewhere. Whatever the source, it resonates with him. He lays down on the bed, staring at the words. 

Balance. All things in life require balance. The wildfire burned the world, as wildfires are meant to do. Light and dark. Fire and water. Creation was not possible without these things. Men and women, engaged in an eternal counterpoint dance. It had been that way with his wife. She was cautious, second-guessing things, always trying to find another way when something didn't work. Flowing like water around an obstacle. He was reckless, almost arrogant in his faith, and if something happened, it was God's will. Burn through it and leave nothing but scorched earth behind. Move on.

 _There's no moving on from this_. He rolls off the bed and walks to Ava's room, sweeping aside the sheet curtain. It falls and rumples into a puddle on the floor. He stands over Ava's bed, something tugging at his brain. Something has led him here, and it takes a second to figure out what. Staring at her pillow, he lays down and rests his head on it, picking up the faint, soapy scent of her shampoo.

There's something hard underneath. His hand strays under the pillow, and he takes out her copy of  _Surviving the Unthinkable._  He frowns at the blazing red, alarmist cover. What could she have read, to have upset her so much a bottle of pills became her only option? He opens it to where she left off, scanning over the page crinkled with her dried teardrops.

The page she stopped at is the first chapter. It reads:

_"Even though you may have a shelter, even though you may have enough food and water to last years and years, even though you may be reading this with your entire family safe and sound, underground, or perhaps you're there out of the kindness of a stranger's heart, the cold, hard truth cannot be undone._

_The truth, dear reader, is that surviving a nuclear war will make you **wish**  you were dead. And dying may be the better choice._

_I know that's a terrible thing to write at the beginning of a book about survival, but it is this author's honest opinion. And you must consider your options and the weight of the burden on you now. Know that nuclear winter is the number one possibility. Know that starvation and loneliness and radiation sickness are just the beginning. Because, dear reader, if you have managed to beat the unthinkable odds and live through the fiery explosions, the hell-winds carrying death, you are only subjecting yourself to a purgatory of woes._

_Consider, if you will, the fact that other people will emerge after the fires die down. They will be just like you: hungry. Scared. Some of them might be violent. They will form roaming bands to plunder whatever supplies and food they can find left. Hunger turns humans into animals, and it only takes a few days. Don't be surprised if, even two weeks outside of a nuclear event, humanity relapses to a more primal, terrifying species._

_A species where rule of nature is secondary to rule of need. A species without laws, only simple rules. One where cannibalism and rape and violence are expected. That is what awaits you when you survive a nuclear apocalypse. If you choose to end your life, **nobody**  could blame you. I certainly won't._  _"_

Joseph slams it shut, disgusted. He tosses it aside, placing his head in his hands. He grabs hold of her pillow, and presses his face into it, letting out a long, loud cry of frustration that's muffled to the world. 

 _She had all that in her head, on top of everything else?_ When the doors to his church had creaked open, and the police had gone marching in, he'd scanned every one of their faces and known their lives instantly, the way only the most clever charlatans and poker players can. Every face, an open book...except hers. Ava's was a mystery. He hadn't even known her real name. It took the end of the world to get to know her, for him to realize her life mirrors his, the counterpoint he's been listening for: their cruel fathers. Their profound losses. Their failures. Their unyielding (some might call thickheaded) personalities.

They may butt heads more than shake hands, but their melodies synchronized. He'd turned a deaf ear, at first, unwilling to hear what fate was trying to whisper. Now the song has died, falling silent. He's lost her.

Joseph bolts to his feet. It's not too late! She can't have gotten far. What the hell is he thinking, letting her go out there, into the wasteland? His sole companion in this horrible world, and he let her go because of what? A stupid inclination?

He dashes for the hatch, reaching for the handle. Stops. Remembers the shadow that fell across him, the weight crashing down when the police knocked on his front door. Remembers collapsing to the floor, after draining that bottle, surrendering to the spinning void. Remembers how frail, how light his daughter's body was, cradled in his hands, a weight no one alive should ever have to bear...

Hard to forget backhanded lessons like that. Hard to think of the Voice as a mere 'inclination'.

So he retreats from the door. Goes to the rec-room, sits at the table, and opens his book. He's dying for a good word. Mostly, he's afraid, and alone, and just wants reassurance that he's done the right thing. But he can't seem to find the correct passage to comfort him. He turns the pages for hours with a bloody hand, when he finally looks up. To his right, the fish Ava saved swim in confused circles in the lemonade pitcher. Still alive. Somehow. But perhaps not for long.

He's starting to hate being right all the time.

* * *

An hour passes, and already she knows this new world will be a lonely one. She thinks of him, underground, with nothing but Dutch's coffin and the fish to keep him company. Egyptian kings were buried with much finer things, but Joseph is surrounded with remnants of his reign: the guns in the armory, his Bible, his last murder victim. It sends a chill through her spine, and she picks up the pace.

A plan. She needs a plan. She'll scout out the island, see if the old research station was still standing. Maybe climb the radio tower, if it's still there, and see what she can see. _Just like the first time. Things repeating themselves..._

She shudders. He's wrong. This time, it  _is_ different. But if the whole, wide world is just like this gray, lifeless maze, she's gonna have a tough time moving on. She draws on the misery Joseph put her through for motivation. The water torture. The countless hours reading to her, filling her head with nonsense, while she's strapped to a chair and wants nothing more than to sleep. Just because he fed her, cared for her like a baby, doesn't mean he _cares_  about her.

Still, what if he did all those things because he was right? What if there really was a Voice, a god, a force that spoke to him?

Ashy snowflakes fall from the sky. She glares over her shoulder, looking back in the direction of the bunker. No. That hypocrite was only ever about proving himself right, basking in his piety, his lies. He is a liar, and she must never forget that. That's all his life was ever about. It makes her fucking sick.

So sick, she has to break away from the trail and throw up in a dead bush. Boomer circles her a few times, sniffing at the puddle of vomit, then bolts ahead, his chest rumbling. She's never seen the dog act so weird. His fur stands up for no reason, and he turns his salt-and-pepper face to the sky often, and she wonders if a dog can process the totality of what's happened. Maybe it's better to think like a dog, in terms of survival, and leave the higher thinking to the aviator-wearing assholes.

Ava gets all the way to the southern end of the island, feeling a little less dead inside now that her blood's pumping. The shack and dock have been blown away. But the sunken shelter's doors are still open, dust and debris spilling down the hole. She starts to go down, but stops on the ledge, the toe of her boot hovering over the precipice. Did she really want to go back underground so soon? What if there is something she could use? Maybe they have a radiation meter. Maybe some supplies.

She takes the plunge into the hole. At the bottom, she makes a disturbing discovery. The shelves have all been cleared of food and supplies. Somebody has raided this bunker, and recently. There's fresh waste in the bathroom. Things are moved around, flipped over. Ransacked.

At her feet, a big puddle of congealed blood with flies buzzing around it. She can't tell if it's animal or human.

"Jesus Christ..." She searches quickly for a weapon, a knife, anything, but comes up empty. Not even a loose pipe.

"Fuck," she hisses, tugging at her hair. She can't shake the notion that she's dreamed about this before. Was she becoming a prophetess?  _How's about I dream up a gun, so I don't get my shit wrecked by whatever did this?_

A whine draws her attention from the blood, to the hatch. Boomer pokes his head over the side of the hole. Probably learned his lesson from last time. He whimpers down at her.

"All right, mutt. I'm comin. You got better places to be?"

She climbs out, checking the woods to her right and left before emerging. All is quiet as Christmas Eve, the island a museum to the macabre, and she is the sole patron. No footprints in the ashes, other than hers and the dog's. _That's odd._ _Whoever or whatever ransacked the shelter should have left prints._ She bites her lip, wishing like hell she had a weapon. Moving on seems like the best option now.

It takes her the rest of the day, but she makes it to the research station without any snags. Still, she's unable to shake the feeling she's being watched. And being 'watched', after the apocalypse, is never a good thing.

The main building survived the fallout, though the windows are busted and the walls blackened on the western and northern sides. She builds a modest fire inside, finding its heat the most reassuring thing she's felt since she found Boomer. She eats a light meal of dried jerky and canned peaches, sipping water, before rolling out her sleeping bag by the fire. The dog lays down next to her, only raising his dusty nose to sniff at the air every so often. 

Free. She's free. She stares into the dancing flames and feeds them more kindling, listening to the crackle, relishing the primal warmth, the light. 

Sleep doesn't come easy in her newfound freedom. Though she's the farthest from Joseph she's been in weeks, she can't seem to stop thinking about him. _Why him, of all fucking people?_ She growls and rolls over in her sleeping bag, trying to think about other things. Why should she give the man who had drugged her any more of her energy? The man who sent his siblings after her to kill her. The man who smothered his baby daughter, so vulnerable and new-

(to spare her from this world and what a world it is, they should all be so lucky...)

-who took it upon himself to become a dictator, terrorizing good people under the guise of a paternal leader.

A log cracks in the fire, shooting up sparks. A new thought strikes her wide awake: what if he did all of that because he _knew?_ Had known the entire time? Isn't that the only way she can justify him? Absolve him? But that's admitting belief in things she can't even comprehend. Least of all now.

She squeezes her eyes shut and rolls onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. She's considered every other possibility, until just now. The nukes were a coincidence. Prophets predicted the end of the world all the fucking time. Throw enough darts blindfolded at a board, eventually you get a bulls-eye. John had known powerful elites and was privy to information most people weren't, and Joseph molded his outlook around the rumors in those inner circles. Self-fulfilling prophecies, reading everything as something else, including the HCPD's arrest of him. Earl Whitehorse's last name, straight out of Revelations. It didn't take a genius to see through that theory.

Maybe he even set off the fucking things himself. Maybe this is all a bliss-induced nightmare. The pain and despair are a little too real for her liking. Besides, she should have woken up by now.

Ava's never considered the other possibility: that he was right. That her captor is a man, only a man, plagued by visions and dreams. And every single time, they come true. No matter how good, how insidious. No matter what the cost to him: his wife. His child. His humanity. All would be crushed under the weight of that burden. He would be forced to take extreme measures to protect his chosen flock.

And there is her, even though she executed his family in the name of justice (but a false justice, the justice of someone misled by the old world) and mocked him every step of the way. He would have to show her mercy, again and again, if the visions told him to.

Maybe even love her.

"Bullshit," she growls, and rolls over for the umpteenth time. "Psycho strung people up and skinned and burned em alive. Fuck that lunatic."

A few seconds later, she rips the sleeping bag off and gets to her feet suddenly. Not because she's moved by a stirring, hidden love confession she's repressed this entire time.

She can't hear the dog. Boomer's gone.

Ava stares out the window, her back bathed in firelight. It takes all her control and willpower to keep from gasping. Someone, something, stares back at her from the broken window frame. 

She clamps her hands over her mouth. The cryptid. The one she dreamed about! Clad in a huge gas mask and hunched overcoat, it's eyes cold and black, reflecting red pinpoints. A faceless demon, walking about the earth... 

Way, way in the distance, Boomer howls.

The thing shifts silently out of frame. 

Cold terror, of a kind she's never felt before, grips her heart. Criminals she can handle. Thugs, drug dealers, and Peggies she can handle, but this thing fills her with stupefying dread.

_There's not supposed to be people out here. What is that thing?_

She hears a noise, and flees into a dark corner. Hushed, muffled voices and grunts sound from outside the station. In here, there are no locks, no barricades, nothing to protect her. Crouching, she tries to make herself as small as possible. They're surrounding the house--she can hear them shuffling, scraping. Bitter tears pool in her eyes. She should have known better than to start a fucking fire! Had she expected Grace or Pastor Jerome to show up, give her a big hug and a hot chocolate? Maybe run into a few Peggies, sit by the fire and sing 'kumbaya'?

Something thuds into the wall behind her, and she jumps. One of them thumps through the open doorway, stalking into the house. It's wrapped head-to-toe in dark, muddied rags. The tanned boots look to be stolen army issue. The rest of it is too ragged, too pieced together to be US or any other army. It utters a low grunt and points to her dying fire with a gloved hand.

Another one says something outside the building. It sounds like English, but she can't be certain.

Using their voices as a guide, she creeps toward the back door. A flashlight beam clicks on, blinding her just as she grasps the doorknob. The thing gives off a startled cry, the light following her out the door. She runs into the dead of night, her own silence a gift and a curse. While her footfalls are muffled, so, too, are the cryptid's.

She collides into the back of one, and lets off a shriek as something long and hard smacks her in the face. Some kind of melee weapon. She sees stars and collapses, crawling on hands and knees. The thing spins around and she can hear it stumping after her, steps laborious under the weight of its pack.

 "Light! Need a light over here!" 

Ava crawls faster, heart pounding in her ears. A slam. The back door! The one from before leaves the house, shines its flashlight on her again. 

"Grab the bitch!"

She gets to her feet and runs, but the closer one has unhinged a baseball bat and charges after her, abandoning its pack. A hand closes around her hair and yanks her, hard, backwards and into its massive chest. Coat buttons notch into her spine. She fights like a wildcat, pushing at his mask, but he twists her arm into an agonizing hold, threatening to snap it. Gnashing her teeth at the pain, she whimpers and gives in. She's too tired to fight back, but it's not just fatigue. Something has put out her fire, smothered it ( _he was right he was right and you left him and this is what you get Ava!_ ).

"Got her!"

A second and third creature run from the building, still training their flashlights on her. They're running and talking like...Men! A wave of disappointment (and strange relief) washes over her. She's let herself get captured by ordinary men!

"Fuck you!" she snarls, her cheeks red with shame. "Lemme go!"

 "This one's been looked after," says the one with the flashlight, roving it over her body. "Look at her. She's clean as a whistle."

They turn their hollow gas-mask faces toward her. She's never felt more stupid in her entire life. How could she have thought they were anything else but men?  _Must have radiated my brain..._

"What do you want?" she groans.

"You come from that shelter, didn't cha?" one asks, his words so muffled she has to strain her ears to understand.

She doesn't answer. The one without the light, shorter than the other two, takes out something and presses it to her throat. She doesn't need to see it to feel how sharp it is, aligned against her throbbing jugular.

"I've gutted people for less, woman," the man says, his voice surprisingly soft compared to the hard bite of whatever's pressed to her throat. "Far less. Make it easy for us, and we might make it easy for you."

Before she can wonder what that means, the one holding her rumbles, "We'll use you only once, each. Leave you alive and whole. For the most part."

The flashlight-holder smirks. "Oh, look at that glare. She'll be a fun one to break."

Ava pulls against her captor, but he only tightens his grip, twisting her arm like he's trying to pry loose a stuck, rusted joint. If she doesn't want to spend the rest of her miserable life with one arm and a busted hump, she'll have to stay still. She eases into his grip, pressing against his foul-smelling body.

"That's better."

"Could keep her," Light-holder suggests, as if she's a stray cat. The beam catches her in the eyes again, and Ava can only blink, helpless. "Could use a woman."

"Quit thinkin with that tiny prick of yours," the short one warns. "We don't need another mouth to feed. She'd just hold us back."

Ava kicks out at him, but he side-steps her boot.

"This bitch is either stubborn or plain stupid."

He cuts her, drawing a thin red line, and she holds in her cry of pain. Drops of black blood form tiny marbles in the ash at her feet. She lengthens her neck as far as possible to avoid the blade. He jerks her by the hair and roars in her ear.

"One more time!  _Did_ you come from the shelter? The one in the _middle_ of the island!?"

"Y-yes," she answers hoarsely, her ear ringing.

"Can you get us inside?"

She swallows, and the cut weeps more blood, soaking the collar of her shirt.

"Yes."

He removes the blade. "Take us."

They tie her wrists with a cable and shove her forward, into the dark.

* * *

The day came and went, but that doesn't mean much to a man stuck underground.

Joseph keeps the locks on everything. He doesn't have the energy to take them down. The hours tick by so maliciously slow, he can't fathom another seven years down there. How had he so easily preached this to his flock before? Convinced his brothers and Faith they would be fine in their bunkers? Even with all the space in the world, Joseph finds that he is poor company.

The answer is people. He'd planned on protecting so many people, comforting them, guiding them. Emerging into a new world as a better human race. Not this tiny prison, all alone. God had seen fit to shrink his world to a few rooms, reduce his followers to a few straggling guppies. 

He wanders around and finds himself standing in front of Ava's fish, lost in his brooding. If this is His will, he will find a way. He'll make use of every goddamned inch of this place. Read every book, blueprint, and document twice over. Teach himself trades...

"Damn it!" He clenches his injured fist, gritting his teeth, tempering his anger with the pain. Only Ava knew the combination to the safe! All the useful books, the knowledge, the time killers are in there! He's left with only fiction and a few outdoor photography books.

Taking one out, he flips through one that Dutch must have printed himself. The first photo he opens to is of a deer being skinned by some local hunters, completely opened up in the middle, the skin and organs exposed. One of the hunters grins as he brandishes his knife, and Joseph's head swims for a second. And he's not squeamish. It feels like the start of a premonition, but he can't be sure.

The red of the blood is so sharp in the light, it jumps out at him from the page. He blinks, and flips through less gory photos, most of them fishing spots. Dutch had an eye for lighting. Maybe he tried to capture as much of it on paper as he could, so he wouldn't forget it when the end of the world came. Joseph flips to a picture of his statue being built. The sun rises over his right shoulder, or a vague suggestion of a shoulder, as the statue is mostly steel beams. The best photo Dutch had taken yet of the sun, drenching the surrounding hills in blazing gold.

Like something out of a dream. An old, forgotten dream. A failure.

He rips the photo out and tears it to pieces, throwing them to the floor. His hand strays of its own accord to the gun on his belt. He traces the grip absently, the cold metal never quite heating to his body temp. It's a vague suggestion of a reminder. Another option. Just in case. Just a reminder.

He raises his bloodshot eyes to the photo of Boomer on the table, the swimming sensation coming back between his ears. 

A loud howl sails down the hall, coming from the door.

Forgetting all other thoughts in an instant, he runs to the hatch, thinking he's hearing things. But now he can hear scratching, behind the hatch! He withdraws the gun and pulls the door open, muscles straining.

Boomer runs in, barking. He jumps up onto Joseph. Paws at him, whining. He steps back so the big dog doesn't bowl him over. Ava isn't here. Something's wrong. And how was Boomer able to get to the lower door? Had she flipped the outer ones over again, maybe had second thoughts?

He leaves the hatch open a crack and runs up the steps. Boomer sniffs the ground, following sets of footprints. Footprints leading up to the flipped doors, then back to the woods. Too many to be Ava's. Too big. 

Joseph bolts for the dark woods.

* * *

"Where is it?!"

The shortest man screams in her face. The lemonade pitcher is smashed into a thousand shards, the guppies flapping by her boots.

Ava looks from him to the other two men. Three to one. She never stood a chance.

"I told you," she utters miserably. "I don't have the fucking key!"

Some of her training's come back, and she knows she has to stall them. At risk of great personal injury. Or death. Or worse.

The short man cautions, "I'd start giving us better answers, if I were you."

"Fuck ya'll." She spits at his feet. 

The big, tall one holding her by her binds grunts and launches her against the wall. She tries to right herself, but her boot slips. The back of her skull smacks concrete, and her vision explodes with blistering lights. Stunned, she slides to the floor.

The one with the flashlight picks up one of Joseph's used shirts. "Where's the other guy? There's another person living here! All this weird Jesus shit in the other room."

"Eden's Gate," the short one corrects. He pauses to shove another forkful of canned food down his gullet, his mask lowered. His face is covered in a putrid landscape of radiation burns and boils. The first thing they did when they found the shelter was demand she take them to food, water. They spent the last half hour smashing jars open, wolfing down half the contents, opening more before they can even finish the ones they've eaten from. The table is stacked with opened and crushed jars.

"The fuck is Eden's Gate?"

"Local cult, took up in these parts. Remember, we saw a group of em, few days back?" the short one answers.

 _What?!_ Ava doesn't have time to process that revelation. The short one sucks peach juice off his fingers, takes his fork and holds the prongs in front of her eyeball.

"I want into that armory, lady." He presses the prongs under her eyeball, and she flinches. "Don't make me scoop out those pretty eyes of yours."

"Wait til he gets back," she groans, sick and dizzy. "He'll open it for you, once he sees you have me."

He grins, stretching his constellation of pink pustules. "You wanna stake your life on that?"

The tall one pulls Ava roughly to her feet. "I saw two rooms. Separate beds.  They aren't fuckin, that's for sure."

Ava's face deepens to red. The flashlight-holder sees this, snickers knowingly, clicks his light off, and wipes his grubby hands and face on Joseph's shirt. He throws it to the floor and spits on it.

"Might be, he won't open it for her. Might try and cut his losses n' fight us. I say we kill her, take what we can, and split."

"He'll do it," Ava insists, struggling to stay on her feet. "Just wait."

"Oh, we'll wait," the short one chuckles. He sets the fork down, stepping uncomfortably close to her. He points to the man with the flashlight. "Stand guard and by ready to ambush our friend."

The other doesn't look to pleased to be bossed around, but he leaves for the entrance. The short one turns back to Ava. Before she can react, he snakes a blistered hand out and gropes her breast. His touch is like slime, and her gorge rises in her throat.

"That begs to question, though, what should we do in the meantime?"

She thrashes against the man holding her, freeing herself of the other's grimy hand. She kicks out against the wall, staggers him, and rips free, but the short one closes in on her. She drops and lashes out, trying to leg-sweep him, but the floor's too slippery, and she slides onto her side, bowling her attacker down with her.

They roll onto broken glass, twisting like snakes. The short man's protected by his clothing. Ava suffers cuts but doesn't heed them. She claws at his chest, and his gas mask flies off.

"Bastard!" She gets him by a fistful of hair, pushing his head towards the floor and glass, but he worms his boots under her and kicks her in the guts. Something tears, and she doubles over, gagging, cradling her cramped midsection.

"Me first." The tall one pushes the short one out of the way. He doesn't bother taking off his gas mask. He looms over her for a few seconds, watching her bent over in agony, perhaps getting off on it. He grabs her by the armpits and hurls her torso onto the table. With her hands bound, she can only struggle like a worm, but he stuns her with a sharp blow to the side of her face.

"Make it quick!" the short man sulks. The tall one grunts, ignoring him as if he's a yapping dog.

"You took too long the last time! She was all white n' stiff, by the time I got her!"

"Quit your bellyachin. I'll save you a piece."

He rips Ava's pants and underwear down to her ankles, so hard it leaves brush burns. She bites her own tongue to keep from crying out, refusing to give him that pleasure. He shoves between her shoulder blades, slamming her torso into the wood, and fumbles with the zip of his filthy pants. His legs press and pin hers thighs into place, and she feels him harden between her thighs.

Still, she doesn't cry. Doesn't scream. Annoyed, he slams her into the table again, harder, winning a whimper from her. He turns his head to the other man.  "Besides, it didn't seem to bother y-"

He never gets to finish. A piece of his skull flies off like a smashed watermelon, pink brain matter splashing out. The bang of the gun leaves ringing in Ava's ears. He slumps over, pinning her down with his weight, his pack. While she struggles against him, the short man lunges.

Joseph rushes into the room, handgun raised, Boomer's snarls and a man's shrieks coming from the hall. The short man reaches for Ava, knife in hand. He pulls her out from under his dead companion. The next two shots miss him and thud into the lifeless body. He wrenches Ava up against him, ready to drive his knife under her ribs.

"I've got your woman!" he snarls. His sour breath fouls the air around her.

"Shoot him, Joseph!" she gasps. "Shoot em!"

While she struggles, the man orders, "Put the gun down, and kick it over here. Or I gut her."

Joseph takes a good look at Ava, sees the cut on her neck, the blood. He meets eyes with her wide, pleading ones, and his expression morphs, from concern to hatred, a look Ava's only seen once or twice before. Then, it's all wiped clean as he blinks. He lowers his gun to the floor.

"Yeah, that's right," the man sneers, mistaking Joseph's placidity for fear, failing to realize this new man is a cold-blooded killer.

Joseph kicks it, but it stops just shy of Ava's attacker. He keeps the knife nestled against her flesh, just below the breast.

"She means somethin to you, doesn't she?" He looks at the doorway, where a moving shadow be seen. "Call off that dog!"

Joseph whistles, and Boomer runs into the room. His muzzle and chest are drenched with blood.

"Easy, boy," he murmurs. The dog growls at the man, all fangs and twitching muscle, but seems to understand he mustn't attack.

The man steps forward to snatch up the gun, taking Ava with him. He starts marching her across the room, forgetting her pants are still tangled around her ankles. She trips, bringing him down with her in a nest of squirming limbs. He lands on top, his knee driving the air from her chest, and readies his knife to stab her.

Hurried footsteps, as Joseph pounds across the room. Ava can only stare at the blade, hovered above her chest. She shuts her eyes. A thunderous burst, like a firecracker, and she opens them. The man is gawking at his knife hand, missing three fingers. They both look down. His severed digits have joined the guppies on the floor. Confused, he turns back to Joseph. 

Joseph shoots him almost point-blank, just off center of his forehead. The man falls to the side, the knife clattering to the floor.

It's over. What happens next exactly, Ava won't remember in full.

She falls to her knees at some point, rocking back and forth. Joseph runs into the hallway, checks to make sure the other one's dead, before rushing back into the room. He walks over to her, swallowing a lump in his throat. She's trembling. Covered in cuts, blood. Grime from the men. Ash. Her cracked lips open and close, searching for words.

"I-I didn't do anything," she starts. "I was tryin to sleep, and they just attacked me! They were gonna...I was...the armory, they wanted the guns but they-"

She breaks off into a series of short, quick breaths, her shoulders heaving. Wordlessly, he picks her up off the floor, carrying her in his arms. She won't recall the entire trip to the infirmary, nor will she remember everything she said, crying against his chest like an infant.

"Shh," he soothes, placing her on one of the infirmary beds. "You're okay. Lie down."

She won't remember him laying her out, sparing her the indignity of being without her pants. He disinfects her legs and arms with iodine, all business, never faltering from his task. The stinging from the iodine brings her back. When she comes to, he's trying to flip her onto her stomach. She recoils in fear, curling into a ball.

"You've got glass stuck in you," he says, while leaning over her. He stands up, clearing his throat. "But it can wait. I'll be right back."

He hands her a blanket to cover herself with, and leaves.

"W-where are you going? Come back!"

That's a new tone he's never heard before: fear. Need. So, she is vulnerable, after all.  

"Just checking the door, I promise. I'll be right back."

Ava sits up and hugs her knees to her chest. Her wounds soak the paper lining on the bed. When he returns. it feels like ages have passed. He's come back with a big first-aid kit, and a little something extra from the armory: a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes. Desperate times, desperate measures.

He hands her a cigarette. She reaches out with unsteady fingers, and puts it between her lips. He takes out a lighter and she leans forward into the flame. A few pulls of the stiff Camel non-menthol, and she stops shaking. A few Dixie cups of whiskey later, and she lets him pluck chunks of glass of her thighs and dress the shallow cut on her neck. Joseph works with steady hands, cigarette between his lips, sipping occasionally from his cup. She's covered by the blanket, but showing a good bit of leg. It takes a few cups of whiskey, and Ava's return to sanity, before he admits that he's enjoying the view a little more than he should.

He finds he likes being the healer. The caretaker. The one in control. Ava winces as he applies tape strips to one of the wider cuts on her lower leg. The blanket starts to slip, and she covers herself quickly, refusing to look at him.

"Did they...?" he asks carefully.

She shakes her head, as if she can fling out the unwanted images. She drains her third cup and sets it down. "No."

"Good."

Usually, he'd have more to say, but he doesn't want to bring it up any more, for her sake. He finishes, and wipes his hands on his jeans.

"Joseph."

Her hand reaches out to grip his forearm. Her touch feels alien to him. Foreign. She raises her eyes to his, the aviators perched on his head.

"I'm sorry." Her eyes are a bit bleary with drink, but she means it. "You were right. You were tryin to warn me. I didn't listen."

He pulls his arm away, gently, and takes off his rubber gloves, tossing them in trash. "It's not your fault. None of this was ever your fault."

She blushes, ashamed. He sits down in the chair by the bed, picking up his half-burned cigarette from the tray. He takes a drag and blows out a cloud of smoke.

"It was meant to be. All of it. Every single drop of blood shed."

She shakes her head. "How can you say that? I killed your family."

The sting of her admission is numbed by the whiskey. He straightens back in the chair, watching her, cigarette perched on his knee. "You were living out a hell you've already been through. Your father. Your sister. Your brother. All dead. What's a few more strangers?"

 _Ouch,_ she thinks, through the haze of the drink.

"John wasn't a stranger," she says hastily. She swallows, tears spilling down her cheeks. She swipes them away as fast as she can, taking a deep, stuttering breath. He pours them each another shot and hands her the cup, their fingertips brushing. She takes it slowly from him. He throws back his and empties it like a pro. Or a man who once spent a lot of time getting to know a bottle.

"I know that," he says, taking another drag off his cig. He looks just as natural smoking it as he does drinking, and a hundred questions pop into her head.  "John told me everything."

Ava lowers her cup, nearly spitting out her whiskey. 

" _Everything_?" she asks, mortified.

With a strange smile on his lips, he gets to his feet. "You need to rest. You've been through a lot today. I will leave you alone."

Still feeling wretched, she says, "Thank you, for saving me. You didn't have to."

He nods once, and turns to leave.

"Joseph?"

He stops. "Hmm?"

She's gazing up at him, and he swears he can read affection there. She smiles with gratitude, only a brief flicker, before she hides her mouth behind the Dixie cup.

She lowers it and says, "I'm glad you're here with me."

He lets those words wash over him, unsure. He supposes this is her version of a white flag. It's a shame it had to take all this, just to get it, and it doesn't feel like a victory. He'd prefer to meet her on common terms, but she's a piteous thing right now, and he wants nothing more than to comfort her. Certain things he can't abide in this world, and those three men had been a culmination of all of them.

He throws his cigarette to the floor and steps on it, and lets her sleep. 

* * *

When he returns, a few hours later, he finds her reading the red 'survival' book ( _more like suicide manual_ ).

"You shouldn't read that," he comments, prepping a clean medical tray at her bedside. She gives him a bristling, questioning look and he adds, "His outlook is...excessive. Not the most positive man to turn to. You should look elsewhere for advice. Get a different book."

He doesn't mean himself, for once, and she's grateful. She sets the book down. "I skipped ahead, you know."

"And? Does it get any better?"

She pauses, watching him prep the suture needle, soak a few cotton balls in iodine.

"He said that the second-best scenario would be to stick with a group of people with morals. Boundaries. Some kinda code. Then, no matter what happens, you keep to that code. You help each other through." She reaches for more whiskey, and shrugs. "Sounds like a cult to me."

"Or a family," he suggests.

She opens her mouth, but only stares at the cup in her hands. He removes the last of the glass, having to flip her over once just to get the rest of the pieces. Ava, to her credit, never breaks composure, not even when she's laying on her stomach and the tweezers are half an inch deep in her left buttock. Joseph places the bloody shards, one by one, on the tray, cleaning her wounds before stitching them closed, keeping the sutures small to avoid scarring.

"Shame the fish didn't make it," Ava says offhand. She grinds her molars while he stitches the last wound shut.

"What? Oh, right." Joseph works like a professional, but he can't help but steal glimpses at the view in front of him, his hands skirting dangerous territory. A lot of curvature to this sinner, and in all the right places.  _No wonder John was obsessed. He always did have hound's blood._

"Are you...sweating?" she asks, craning her head back to look at him. He pretends to be focused on his task. She grins. "Your bedside manner is showin, doc."

Flustered, he ties off the last stitch, wiping his brow, and she covers up again. It's good to hear her joking, so soon after. But he knows it's a long way out of the woods for the both of them. His next task is to dispose of the bodies and clean all the blood, which he does, dragging the men up the stairs and out of the shelter like sacks of leaves, while Ava rests in a clean bed he's made for her. His first steps outside in the weak daylight are short-lived. He takes one look around, and thinks there's absolutely nothing worth seeing. Not yet, anyway.

Still, it's good to know they won't burn up in flames, if they need to leave.

After a well-deserved shower, he visits her room, to find her passed out, the bottle of whiskey in her hand and a burnt-out cigarette in her mouth. He takes both away, watching her chest rise and fall, a piece of hair wiggling with each breath from her partially-open lips. Boomer's eyes are on him the entire time, but the dog's spent most of the day sleeping, too, and has no energy to growl.

"I guess you're all right," he tells the dog, by way of thanks.

Joseph settles into his own bed, trying to get some sleep, a full cup of whiskey at his bedside. He can't bring himself to drink another drop, and he doesn't. After a few restless hours in the dark, his heart racing, he gets up, hearing an unsettling noise. Coming from Ava's room. He pulls the sheet aside, and sees her tense under her covers, hears her stifle a deep sob. Her shoulders won't stop shaking, and he knows she's crying, smothering her tears so he won't notice.

Taking a deep breath, he crosses the room. Without hesitating, he lays down next to her, the blankets forming a barrier between them. If he can find the strength to stitch her up, without humiliating either of them, he can do this, too. Ava goes rigid instantly, realizing what's going on. He throws an arm over her to steady her, and she softens. She needs a benign embrace. A protector. He can at least do that much. He's not inhuman, after all. Neither is she.

For the next few hours, that's all they are. Two lonely humans, taking simple refuge in each other's presence. Eventually, Joseph's heart slows. Ava's shaking stops. Their heartbeats synchronize. They drift off to sleep, so deep even Joseph doesn't dream.

When he wakes, she has rolled over, her head nestled against the groove his breastbone. Somehow, the covers have been pushed aside. Her soft breath puffs against his skin, breaking his flesh out into goosebumps. He considers getting up and heading to his own bed, but this is the best he's felt in months, and it would take another apocalypse to pull him away.


	7. Boomer's Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slice-of-life chapter featuring Boomer. Life after the apocalypse isn't quite as thrilling, but there's enough weird chemistry brewing between the two humans he shares a home with to keep this curious dog preoccupied...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo this chapter is...silly. I wanted another break from all the drama. There's fluff and angst here too tbh. I wanted to write from Boomer's perspective, ever since I came up with this story, and I managed to find a way for it to fit into the plot. Also, best doggo deserves his own chapter. I debated giving him an Aussie accent but I'm terrible with that and it would have been even more cringe than it already is lmao.

The dog wakes before anyone else, there in his home of Big Hole in the Ground.

He's lived here for a few months now. Boomer was always scolded for digging holes, but when humans dig the biggest, deepest, boxiest one he's ever seen, they move right in and congratulate one another. Fancy that! Still, better stuck under here, than out there. He wasn't the type of mutt to cower from fireworks, but the massive explosions in the sky had frightened him to death, and if the Dead Bald Guy hadn't opened his door to the Aussie mix bolting wildly through the woods, they'd be scraping what's left of him off the trail with a spatula.

He sniffs the air, lifting his head. It's morning, judging by the loud rumble of his stomach. He might not be able to tell time, but he knows when it's time to eat. He gets to his paws, trotting over to his Human. 

He finds her tangled in blankets on the bottom bunk, her hair coiled around her face. His sweet, brave, mysterious Human. She's belonged to him, ever since she found him at the ransacked pumpkin farm, crying over the corpses of his former owners.

One day, he'd been a happy guard dog, chewing on pumpkins and apples, chasing turkeys through the fields, occasionally eating his owners' oregano stash (sleeping it off for two days). There had been lots of other dogs to play and mate with. Even one of the white wolves came down from the north--a runt female with a bent ear and curly tail, rejected and bullied by her fellow Judges, on the run from the men hunting her down. Boomer had been more than happy to mate with a specimen like her, and he even led her away into the woods every time the men from the mountains came looking for her.

There had been lots of fun smells, too: apples, pumpkin guts, cow dung, grass, leather! He was a good boy. His owners told him so, almost every day. Life had been good on the farm. 

The next thing he knew, a bunch of strange men came, reeking of oil, fire, metal, and man-stink. They snooped around a few times, and each time they smelled angrier and brought more men with them. Boomer growled and scared them off the property every time. Then, a shouting match erupted, and all hell broke loose. The men brought cages, and they smelled like the she-wolf, only bad. He had feared the cage. They wanted to capture him and send him to the mountains! His owners fought the men, and they set Boomer free to run, far away, but he refused to leave. Good boys never run. He fought beside them, witnessing everything: the violent explosions. Smoke. The fire that consumed part of his home. Screams.

The air was tinged with the sharp tang of blood, the sickening stench of smoke. He couldn't even smell his favorite apples. Even worse, the man and woman, his owners, weren't getting up anymore. Boomer could only sit there, helpless, and whimper over them. Was he still a good boy? 

He hadn't thought so, until _she_  had arrived. She rubbed his belly til he felt better, and dropped a few of the Smelly Men with her Stick That Goes Boom. Boomer even helped take down one of the men who was sneaking up on the woman, and oh, how good that had felt! When it was all over, she smiled at him, scratched him behind the ears, and simply said 'good boy'. He didn't feel all the way better, but he wagged his tail for the first time in days. Then and there, he'd claimed her as his, forever.

Many strange things happened since that day, including this one: the alpha male of the Smelly Men Tribe is just in the other room, sleeping! Of all the nerve. Boomer leaves him alone, but only because his Human insists on making this her den for the time being (even though she hasn't claimed the alpha male as her mate yet. Very strange, these humans).

"Nnn...ahh, John," his Human sighs in her sleep, rolling onto her back, a funny little smile on her face. One of her hands dangles over the edge of the mattress. Boomer walks right up and presses his cold, wet nose into it. 

_Hello! It's time to get up. Feed me!_

The hand twitches. He licks her fingers for good measure, tasting salt, a little bit of last night's dinner: yams. Boomer whines in the back of his throat when she doesn't move. His Human is a frustrating person to wake. Sometimes, she jumps to her feet, and he can smell she's in a good or nervous mood, but the food usually comes quick. Sometimes, it takes her forever to get up, no matter how much he barks and scratches. Those days she moves slow, if she moves at all, and the food and pets are in short supply.

He hates those days the most. The days he licks saltwater from his Human's eyes while she's curled up in bed.

Today, however, seems like it's going to be a good one. She growls and rolls over. Opens her eyes. Says something in Human speak, followed by something he recognizes: his name. Boomer wags his bushy tail and goes right for her face.

_Yes hello here is a lick to your face for good measure just to make sure you're awake! Also, feed me!_

No saltwater coming from her eyes. That's good. His Human doesn't appreciate the slimy kiss, though. She wipes her face with a grimace and sits up, her hair a tangled rat's nest. She stretches like a cat, and Boomer sits on his haunches, tilting his head. It doesn't take long for him to realize why she's in a good mood. As she rises, he sticks his nose deep into her cotton shorts, by way of customary greeting.

"Hey! Quit it."

She bats him away, jumping aside, but the analysis is complete. His human is ready to mate. Whether she's aware of it or not, Boomer can't say. He is just a dog, after all.

And, true to his nature, he smells anything and everything, his world an amalgamation of sight, scent, and sound. In the hallway, he detects the faintest trace of the Bad Men from the Woods and sniffs after the old blood trail. It fades before he can get to the hatch, and he loses interest. He had enjoyed tearing the man's throat out after what they did to his Human. The alpha man had helped. A little. Boomer did all the hard work, and he didn't even get any treats! Just a good rinsing to get all the blood off him, and one good scratch behind the ears.

He'll take what he can get. Such was life in Big Hole in the Ground. Now that they've been here a while now, they have a routine. It's much better from when the man did everything, keeping Boomer and his Human both tied up. Ever since the man killed the Bad Men from the Woods and proved to the woman he was no beta, whenever they're around each other, Boomer no longer senses anger or fear. He's even picked up a whiff of the 'happy chemical' a few times, coming from both of them. Strange, indeed.

"Ugh...feels like I haven't even slept."

She scratches her lower back with her nails, digging under her shirt, yawning. He follows her into the kitchen, but she heads through the second doorway and into the bathroom. 

_Where are you going? That looks dangerous. Can I come in?_

He tries to follow her, but she sticks out a foot and stops him, shutting the door. He returns to sniffing the rec-room and kitchen, scanning for anything unfamiliar, giving everything an "olfactory pat-down". This room is clear. No rats, no cockroaches, no squirrels (his mortal enemies), and no Bad Men from the Woods. There hasn't been any more of them since the one incident. But he wouldn't be a good boy if he wasn't always on alert.

Boomer trots over to where the fish used to be, sad he can't watch them. He used to stare as if hypnotized at their shiny little bodies. In their place, his Human has taken all the stuff from the safe and returned it to the shelf. She and the man read books from it often, and spend an awful lot of time doing so, Boomer can't figure out what for. He tried to get his teeth in one, just to see if they were worth a good chewing. His Human chased him all around Big Hole until she cornered him and ripped it from his slobbering jowls.

At the sight of her torn, slobber-soaked book, his Human puffed up, so angry she started crying, and Boomer ran away with his tail between his legs. The man had laughed at her tears, at the shredded book, and then, the weirdest thing, his Human started laughing back! The man had helped her off the floor, and Boomer picked up all sorts of secret scents and signals. 

In the end, he didn't see what all the fuss was about. Stupid book didn't even taste good.

The toilet flushes, and finally his Human exits the bathroom. He runs over, wagging his tail. 

_You were gone way too long; are you okay? Do you require assistance? Where is my food?_

"All right, all right. Hold on, mutt."

She takes his food bowl and puts it on the counter. He lifts his front paw.

_Yes very good very good. Now, for the food part of the equation please._

He waits to see what she'll pick for him today. Sometimes she gives him good stuff: beef, chicken, rice. Slimy, from a can, but good. Other times, not so good. The beans are the worst. The beans keep him up at night, and the humans do everything in their power to avoid him for the next day. Boomer doesn't like bean day.

Today, thankfully, is not bean day. She scoops out some leftover yams and supplements them with some peanut butter and rice. 

"You're gonna get fat on that stuff," she tells him, setting his food bowl on the floor. "Gonna have to find a source of meat for you, or you'll turn into a lapdog!"

'Dog' is the only word he understands. _Yes that's me._ He shoves his head unceremoniously into the bowl and inhales the mushy food. It isn't half bad. Then again, that's coming from a creature who enjoys rolling in shit and gnawing on three-day-old squirrel intestines.

His Human watches him for a moment. She doesn't make any food for herself, but Boomer doesn't really notice. He lifts his head finally, whiskers coated in orange globs. She wets a paper towel and holds him still as she wipes him off. _Hey hey I was saving that for later!_ He waits next to her, expectant, excited. What will they be getting up to today?  _I hope it's an adventure oh please please please let it be an adventure._

After she dresses and attacks her teeth with a small stick and foam, she starts pulling one of the big, scary plastic suits over herself. Boomer hates the way they crinkle and mask her smell. Mostly, he hates that he can't read her facial expressions, on account of the mask. It reminds him of the Bad Men, and he is always on guard whenever they go outside now. Today seems like it's going to be an Outside Day. A vast improvement from 'Human Stares at Paper Chew Toy While Boomer Sleeps' day.

His tail is going a mile a minute, thumping against the big wash sink in the front entrance. _Outside! We're going outside today! Awwww yiss!_

"Ava, wait a moment."

 _Aww, no_. The alpha man, Walks-with-no-Shirt, runs into the wash room near the hatch. Today, he's pulled a tight cotton t-shirt on, but it'll probably get shucked off sooner or later, hence the name. Boomer sits and watches their exchange. Usually when Walks-with-no-Shirt ran into a room, there was trouble.

"What is it?"

"I thought we agreed we wouldn't go outside without one another. For safety."

His Human has a small Stick that Goes Boom on her hip, and she pats it. The man gave it to her, after he'd taken all the locks off everything in the shelter, including the armory. He'd just put those all on a few days beforehand. Boomer sometimes wonders if he's stupid. How did he manage to become the alpha male of so many people when he couldn't even make up his mind about things?

"Got all the safety I need right here."  

Walks-with-no-Shirt gives her a hurt look.

She adds, "Just kiddin. You were sleepin like a baby. Didn't wanna wake you, figured a few hundred feet from the bunker wouldn't hurt."

Boomer looks at her face next, a bit of disappointment softening her features. He thinks she's sad because she wants to be alone. She's snuck out with the dog before, taking him for walks on the leash. She always brings a boxy machine with her, scanning the soil and dust. After their walks, he has to take a bath to get all the dust off him ( _ugh!_ ), and she makes him swallow big, nasty pills ( _uuuugh!_ ), but it's worth it just to go outside.

 _Please don't say no to my Human._  He watches the man intently.

"You should have woken me, Ava."

"Joseph, I don't wanna fight over this. Can we just let it slide?"

"Yes, but I'm going with you."

"Fine. Don't keep me waitin."

The man scoffs, but he pulls on the plastic suit. Boomer sniffs the soles of his rubber boots, shakes his neck fur, then returns to his Human's side. He can tell it's her because her figure is smaller and slighter than the man's. Also, they walk differently. Walks-with-no-Shirt uses long, dramatic strides. His Human's steps are small, quick, and careful.

Together, they go up the stairs, through doors number one and number two. Speaking of number two...Boomer nudges his Human with his muzzle. Duty calls, and they're going too slow! She hooks a lead on him and the man shoves the top doors open, their rusty hinges squeaking. Gray light floods their vision, but to the dog nothing looks different, really. A little less blues and yellows, but plenty of black, white, and gray.

Even though they've been outside many times before that, the two humans stop at the sight of the bleak, burned forest. It's the tiniest pause, but they both seem to be taking in something the dog can't quite fathom. They stand like trees, solid and frozen into the ground.

He tugs on his leash unexpectedly, and nearly slips from his Human's grip. _Excuse me but can we go now? I gotta go!_

"Hold your horses," she murmurs. She attempts to smirk, but it sounds more like a rusty whimper.

She shudders, and says finally,

"Let's go."

She leads him to the dead bushes, his designated drop-off area. While he does his business, he stares up at her, making sure she's watching for predators while in such a vulnerable state. She's gazing off into the woods, but she doesn't seem to be looking at anything. When he finishes and covers his business with dirt, she sighs again, and the three of them walk away from the bunker.

The man sticks close to her side, and Boomer doesn't need to smell his Human to tell she's annoyed by him. The man certainly  _acts_ like her protective mate sometimes. Boomer can't seem to figure out their dynamic. Judging by the awkward silence, neither can they.

While approaching seven uneven lumps of soil with stone markers, they stop for a moment. The humans had dug the holes a few weeks back. Boomer had been confused what they were for, until they lowered Dead Bald Guy into one of them and threw dirt on him, like a prized bone.

"Nothing's been at the graves," she observes. "No animals. Not big ones, anyway."

"We saw some crows a few days back."

"Those looked half-starved. Nothing's alive, Joseph. It..."

"What is it? What's troubling you?"

"Nothing. Just gives me the creeps, is all."

She stands before the seven graves, her plastic head and mask bowed. They buried other people, too. Including the three men from the woods. And they dragged some _really_  nasty, odorous stuff out of the truck, large bundles that the man wrapped in tarp before his Human would even look at them. Boomer kept his distance until those were good and buried. His Human spent many days in bed after that, murmuring names he recognized, and some he did not.

Boomer whines.  _This is all very nice, but unless I can dig up those bones, can we get moving please?_  

Walks-with-no-Shirt stands next to the woman. He says a quiet prayer to himself, his head bowed. She turns away and heads down the path before he can finish, but the man catches up to her with a few long strides. They spend the rest of the day tending to an empty square of land, not far from Big Hole, surrounded by trees on three sides, the lake to Boomer's right. First, they pick up any sticks, then they use hoes and rakes to plow away dust from the surface, burying the fresh piles of ashen soil in the woods.

"Go on, get your exercise, mutt."

She lets him off the leash, and he runs around the perimeter, sniffing everything, even the black water. The lake tastes funny, and his instincts alert him not to drink from it. It smells of metal, and something flowery, but mostly chalk and ash. He can't smell things like fish and plants anymore. So he sits by the water line, staring off at the woods on the other side.

"Nothing's sprouting here," his Human remarks, words muffled through her face mask. She collapses to her rump, head thrown back in defeat. "I haven't seen any plant life growing..."

The man dusts off his gloves and rises from the earth he was inspecting. He helps her to her feet.

"Give it more time," he says. "We've done all we can here. Trust that if it's meant to grow, it will."

"I'd _kill_ for some fresh broccoli right about now. Some spinach. Anything green," she sighs. "God, I miss cookin with real food."

The man makes a low sound of surprise. "Hmm."

"What was that for?"

"I didn't take you for someone who enjoys cooking. That's all."

"Yeah, well, I'm just fulla surprises." She drops her sarcasm, and pauses, leaning over and staring at the dirt. She straightens up, and one hand rocks the upright handle of the rake, back and forth.

"My Mama taught me. She took pride in her food. Papa owned a restaurant in town. Mostly, it was a cover for their smugglin operation, but we actually did cook things, too."

"What sort of food? Italian?"

Boomer tilts his head. It's unusual for them to chat this much. Their voices sound odd and distorted coming from behind the masks, but it's better than the grave silence of the forest.

His Human clouds her mask as she grins.

"Best Italian food in town! Although, since we were the _only_ Italian restaurant for miles, that's not much to brag about. But Mama taught me the basics. I just built on them from there."

"She sounds like a strong woman, your mother."

She picks up a rake and attacks the dirt clods with it. "She did her best with the hand she was given. She didn't deserve to go out, the way she did."

"How was that?"

"Cancer. Lost her six year battle with it."

"I'm sorry. That must have been hard for you."

She shrugs, and goes back to attacking the earth at her feet. Boomer can smell the worms she chops in half, a few beetle carcasses.

After some time, she lifts her head, and asks, "What about you? Were you close with either of your parents?"

"...No. Just my brothers."

With that, she drops the matter. The man takes watch at the edge of the garden, giving her space to reflect while she shoves the dirt around. Boomer watches them both. The man gazes in her direction often. Now and again, she stops and peers over her shoulder back at him, but he's always facing the woods. They play this childish game of tag without even realizing it.

After a while, the man walks over to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "We should head back. It's almost nightfall."

She rises to her full height. "Yeah."

He raises his hand and whistles to Boomer. The dog's ears twitch at the sharp signal, and, after a moment's pause, he bounds over to the man's side. 

"Well, look at that. Seems you can listen, after all."

Boomer snorts and trots over to his Human. Walks-with-no-shirt grunts his disappointment. On the walk back, the woman says,

"I think we should branch out more. Take longer day hikes, see if we can find anybody. We're still not gettin anythin on the radio."

"All the towers were wiped out, most likely."

"Then we find them by sight. We need to keep movin. Can't stay on this island forever." She pauses. "There could be others out there. My people and your people. Waiting for us to find them, or searchin for other survivors. We should be, too."

He stops, and turns to her. "Our place is here for now."

She grumbles something, kicking a stick across their path. Boomer gives chase, plucking it from the ground in his fangs. _Mine all mine look at my stick isn't it great!_

But she doesn't let him take it inside. Nothing from outside is allowed in the Big Hole, except themselves. The outside is poison. Outside-world is dangerous, and their little pack must stick together, if they're to survive this long, strange winter.

Even Boomer knows that much.

* * *

They rinse off the suits first, and peel them off like second skins, keeping their normal clothes on. They hang them by the showers, and the woman calls the dog over to her.

"Hold still for once," she grumbles, grabbing him by the collar. He whines and wiggles against her, pulling away as she forces him under the water stream. It's cold and gets in his eyes, dampening his fur. He hates it, but he puts up with it. She gets all the dust off him, taking special care with his paws. She forces a few pills down his throat, and after swallowing them he runs into the hallway and shakes water everywhere like a sprinkler.

Before they go their separate ways for the evening, Walks-with-no-Shirt and his Human sit down at the table, with the same book that he always carries around.

He reads to her from it, and she waits patiently, her hands resting on her thighs. Boomer lays at her feet, and she reaches down to stroke him occasionally while she listens. Now and again, she grips his fur tight, or taps her foot. She's tolerating this, the way he tolerates the showers after outside time. The man goes on for an hour, reading in a low, lulling voice, and sometimes she repeats what he says, or asks him a question.

Boomer can't understand any of it. But the man seems satisfied when he shuts his book.

"We're done for today. I trust you will think about everything you've heard," he says.

"I will."

Satisfied, he heads for his room. The woman lingers at the table, chewing her lip. She raises her thumb nail to her mouth and gnaws on that for a bit.

Boomer cruises over and promptly sticks his nose in her lap.  _Hello I can't help but notice it is dinner time and where is the food? Also you smell interesting right now._

She gets up, offended, and fixes him dinner. She eats a light meal from a can. Her spoon prods and pushes the food around, but she can't bring herself to take a bite. Eventually, she gives up and sets the can down, uneaten. Once the dog's done gulping down the mush, he finds her in the room with all the radio equipment. This room used to be noisy, with a bunch of blinking lights and buzzing noises that hurt his ears, but now it's dead quiet.

Boomer wags his tail, panting, and sits.  _What are you doing in here? This room is boring. We should play fetch! Remember that stick I found?_

His Human seems distressed, her mouth drawn into a frown. She looks around once, before digging into her jeans pocket. She takes out an old, wrinkled piece of paper and gently opens it, reading it slowly. He trots over, coal-black nostrils trembling. The scents he picks up from the paper are ones he's familiar with, but hasn't smelled in a long time: Cologne. The fragrant, white flowers that made him sneeze. Ink and blood, intermingled. Leather, from the long overcoat of the man who once wore it.

The paper smells like Cologne Guy. The one who flew the big silver plane. The one his Human took for a mate. She misses him, her body heating up the longer she reads, eyes glassy. But that man was dead. Boomer was there, when she murdered him. They'd chased one another in the woods, and she hunted him down. He must have committed some great offense, to have displeased his mate so badly...

The best way to get over an old mate, is to find a new one. Every dog knows that. But the woman refuses to act on her instincts. How was he supposed to be a good boy when he couldn't even cheer her up? 

Boomer licks his chops and yawns. Whines.

She wipes her eyes, sniffling. Footsteps! He hears them in the hallway, and his ears quirk. She hastily folds the paper and shoves it in her pocket, just as Walks-with-no-Shirt enters the room.

Boomer woofs at him.  _My Human is not in a good mood; do not upset her further!_

True to his name, the man is without his shirt again, and his hair is disheveled and messy from sleep. He doesn't say anything when he sees her crying, her face hidden in her crooked elbow, ashamed. Instead, he closes the space between them, and sweeps her up in his arms. She makes a small sound of surprise, but doesn't try and pull away.

Boomer watches intently. The man's never done this before. His Human is tense at first. If she had fur, it would be standing up everywhere. Gradually, she sinks into his embrace, wrapping her arms around his midsection. They sway a little, like the world's slowest dancers. She presses her face into his chest, her shoulders shaking, and he rests his chin on her head, stroking her hair lightly while she cries.

From his spot in the corner, the dog opens his mouth and pants, his tongue lolling between his fangs. He can taste the change in the air, even if the humans cannot. 

They stay like this for a few moments, until she stops sobbing. The man dries her tears, wiping them away with his hand. As she raises her head, looking up at him, a tidal wave of pheromones hits the dog, coming off both of them. Their faces are very, very close. They're either about to start a fight to the death, or...

"Ava..." he says softly.

She slides her hands over his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck. He keeps his at the small of her back, holding her close. She buries her face in his strong neck. They're emitting so much heat, the dog jumps to his feet in his excitement. Finally, they are doing what they should have done a long time ago. He pads toward the doorway.

_I'll leave you both to it, then. Don't mind me._

But, something is wrong.

"Wait."

His Human pulls away suddenly. The man takes a step back, exhaling sharply. Anxiety and fear poison the carnal signals in the air. Without uttering a word to one another, they split and head for their separate rooms. Boomer dutifully follows after the woman, caught in the wake of her lingering pheromones. If the dog's disappointed, he doesn't show it. The ways of humans are mysterious to him. They even seem to confound themselves, because his Human forgets where she's going and bumps into a shelf, before righting course and slipping past the sheet to her room. 

She changes into soft clothes and climbs into bed. Boomer joins her on the floor below, his head propped on his paws. Now he is truly confused by her: she's still radiating hormones like a flower seeding the air, but here she remains, alone. Her body is telling her it's time to make babies. If she's so lonely, why doesn't she take the man for a mate? He seems more than willing to put babies inside her...or at least, he smelled that way.

It's too big a riddle for his mind to work out now. After a while, she unfolds the wrinkled paper, cradling it close, eyes wet and gleaming. He is too tired to get up and lick them clear. When her anxiety worsens, he leaps onto the bed, curling up at her feet. At his weight and warmth, she calms down, and tucks the paper back into a secret space.

"Good boy," she whispers, scratching his head. Her words are nasally with tears. "Good dog."

He wags his tail once. Now, he can sleep...

As he drifts off, he dreams of chasing skunks and deer through an endless wood. The archer-girl runs after him, the one with the bow and the scars on her face. His Human isn't far behind, a rifle in her hands. They are laughing. He hasn't seen the archer, or any of his old friends, in a long, long time. He still dreams about them, and the big cat, the grizzly bear. Not just his friends. His family. His pack.

His Human dreams about them, too. She says their names in her sleep, sometimes. Perhaps they will see them all again, one day. And they'll go riding in jeeps and hunt deer and bears, or blow up compounds, or dance around the campfire, as they used to do before.

One day, maybe. After all, once, the hatch had been closed, and now it was open. Anything is possible. It was that simple...at least, in the sleep-addled mind of one loyal, lucky dog. Maybe one day these humans will come around and see things his way.

Until then, all he can do is watch out for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Ava is always the one breaking down and crying at the end of these things. That's gonna change in the next chapter. >:)


	8. The Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joseph finds something that forces him to confront Ava and his own confused feelings. Past Deputy Morandi leaves her old life and starts her new one, setting everything in motion...

Oh Mother they say, they say he was made for me  
Just you wait a while, just you wait and see  
He tattooed with the Devil’s eyes  
Idle hands and voice so kind  
That lies  
But he lies

You lie, you lie, and suffer my name  
It’s mine, it’s mine to give or take it  
So throw me in that deep black hole of his hell 

-"The Liar," Marriages

~

She flies in her dreams  
searching for him  
but she only dreams about things she's never seen

He sits on the corner of San Francisco and Cerritos  
He's been there for years  
She's lost and has never been found  
and she barely knows her way around town  
  
Yeah she barely knows her way around town  
She barely knows her way

Santa Fe, crash-landin mystery...  
Long, black hair was the only debris...

Space girl, are you searching for him?  
Space girl, are you searching for him?

Santa Fe, crash-landin mystery...  
Long, black hair was the only debris...

Space girl, have you finally found me?  
Space girl, have you finally found me?

-"Hope Faith County" Jaye Jayle

* * *

_"Montana? Are you fucking serious?"_

_Ava tossed the Hope County brochure on her Lieutenant's desk._

_"Language," Lt. Blanchard grunted, typing something on his computer._

_"This is a joke," she huffed, hands on her hips. "It's gotta be."_

_"You see any clowns? Cuz I don't."_

_She placed both hands on his desk. "I belong in the city, sir. The mountains, they...they don't suit me."_

_"Frankly, Morandi, nobody gives a crap about what 'suits' you."_

_Blanchard rubbed the wrinkled neck folds just under the bald back of his head. From behind, he resembled a naked mole rat in uniform. But Deputy Morandi wasn't facing him from the back. She stood before his desk, her arms folded across her chest, a plastic guest-ID hanging where her police badge should have been._

_Blanchard pinched the space above the bridge of his nose and between his eyes, trying to stave off an incoming headache. Californians were no strangers to heat, but at 89 degrees at 11 in the morning, it was shaping up to be another brutal, bad day, birthed by a bad week, spawned from a month of hell. A month where he'd seen one of his best deputies slain. Or, he had thought Deputy Jason Ramirez was one of his department's best. Turned out, he didn't know a damned thing about the man, or his ex-partner seething in front of him now._

_One thing he did know: it wasn't just the heat making her sweat. Guilt didn't look good on someone so young._ _He slid the brochure across his desk, without looking at it. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his brow._

_"What's the matter?" he asked. "Little fishing, little baseball, some clean air'll do you good. Clear your head."  
_

_In response, she grabbed the brochure and tore it in half._

Can't say it'll clean that conscience of yours, though, _he mused. He'd never liked the young, tanned deputy with the mountain accent. She was trying so hard to be West Coast, to be anything but the backwater roots so deeply embedded into who she was. People who weren't comfortable with themselves bothered him. He'd wanted to like her. Hell, he gave everybody in the department their fair chance, and that was more than some of them deserved. But there was something about the way she skirted his eyes, how she wouldn't look him head-on, unless it was to glare at him. There was something insubordinate burning white-hot inside the young deputy. She was itching for things to singe._

_In short, she'd been a ticking time bomb, and there they were, scorched in the aftermath of her shitty decisions, no matter how 'noble' the origins (he refused to let in any of her excuses, something about a sick mother, rehab clinics, a drug addict sister, bills--the lamentations of a criminal with their ticket already punched)._

_Deputy Morandi stabbed her hand out in a way that was distinctly East Coast Italian, at least to the Lieutenant._

_"It's in the middle of fuckin nowhere...sir." She remembered her manners at the last minute, but it was too late._

_Lt. Blanchard barked, "Language!"_

_His office was no stranger to colorful words, as prolific as the pattern of coffee rings that refused to buff out of his desk. But her attitude was starting to annoy him._

_"I thought maybe something upstate," she hinted. "Or even Texas. I could work the border. They could use me, down there. Shit, I got the experience now. And you can bet I won't make the same mistake twice."_

_"Beggers can't be choosers," he grunted, marveling at the balls on this woman. "Be glad I didn't send you to Florida. Did you really come here to argue this with me?"_

_She thumbed her nose and sniffed, looking at him for more. He seized a black fountain pen and tapped a stack of papers, of varying sizes, on his desk._

_"It's taken every favor owed to me, every resource at my disposal, just to get you this. Show a little more gratitude."_

_"And what is that, exactly?"_

_He picked it all up in his great hands and thrust it out to her. She combed through everything, including a fake birth certificate for someone named 'Anne M. Romano'. The name kept popping up like bedbugs, with each paper she flipped over._ _Her face fell, the finality of it hitting her at last. A look he'd seen in so many convicts when they realized they were being arrested, or taken to trial, or sentenced: the look of someone who had finally realized they were out of time._

_"Christ. Could they have picked a more stereotypical name? Romano, really?"_

_"That's your_ _new life in your hands," Blanchard warned angrily. "Your ticket out of a jail cell."_

_She tucked the bundle under her arm, unceremonious._

_"Witness protection'll take care of the rest. Now get outta my office. And don't let me see your face around here again," he rumbled. He turned back to his computer._ _When he looked up again, Ava hadn't left._

_"Sir..."_

_"What?" he groused. "Do I really need to have you escorted out?"_

_She shook her head, saying carefully,_   _"I...I didn't come here to argue about the transfer. Before I leave, I just gotta know somethin."_

_"Know what?"_

_She hefted the papers in one hand. "You didn't have to do all this for me. Why not let me take the fall?"_

_He sighed, rubbing his temples. "Christ, but you're stupid. A good cop, when you were doing your actual job. But stupid. I can see how Ramirez roped you into his scheme."_

_A shameful color rose to her face. She glanced at the window, at their ghostly reflections._

_"I should've done something different, to keep you straight. But I'm not your babysitter, or your fairy-godmother. I have a department to run._ _You're not the first cop to dip into the collection plate," Lt. Blanchard mused, placing his hands on his desk. "Lord knows, you won't be the last, and their reasons will be sorrier than yours, you can bet. But you don't deserve any kind of answer from me. Rest assured, this decision wasn't made with your fucking feelings in mind."_

_She nodded, accepting his stinging remarks and letting them sink into her without protest. She'd fucked up. Royally. She was getting off almost Scott free. A name, a location change were nothing, compared to voluntary manslaughter charges, among a slew of other offenses. Even she couldn't rail against this too much._

_"Still, you were straight with me," Blanchard reconsidered. The pen tapped a mile a minute in his thick fingers. "In the interrogation room. You told me everything. I respect honesty. Goes a long way, around here. A shame you didn't try it sooner."_

_She shifted on her feet, uncomfortable. Even in her soccer-mom outfit, she carried herself like police. She was born to be a cop, or a criminal, and couldn't decide on either, so she'd become both. Maybe she was truer to her nature than he'd given her credit for. He didn't envy people with such duality._

_"I'll tell you this much: I wanted to nail you to a cross and hoist you up for the city to see," he said. He didn't relish the way her shoulders sagged, but it did his heart good to finally see some humility in the firebrand. Maybe there was hope, after all._

_"Honesty or no, you deserve to be punished, to the full extent of the law. But optics matter these days, more than the law, at least according to my superiors. We can't have LAPD running around, selling drugs, abusing their badge, getting into shootouts like it's the god-damned Wild West. Makes the board look bad. So you must have a guardian angel looking out for you, but it wasn't me. They want you dead..."_

_She snapped to attention, eyes widened._

_"...in a figurative sense. Relocated and out of sight, out of mind. That's all."_

_She had the sneaking suspicion it was mostly him, saving her from the chopping block, but didn't let on. Whatever good will had been between her superior and herself, had long since crumbled on her side. She was lucky she found herself at the mercy of a man like him._

_"Thank you," she said, not uncaring. "I'm awful sorry, Lieutenant. I wish...things had turned out different."_

_"Save it for a priest," he scoffed, waving her out the door. "Where you're going, I hear there's church folk aplenty. Maybe you'll learn something."_

_Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Tears burned the borders of her eyes. She turned so he wouldn't see them, opening the door, and Blanchard could hear the shit-storm already stirring on the floor._

_"Hey Morandi, where are they sending you?"_

_"Got another one of those folders for me?"_

_"I wish I could get my partner killed and retire."_

_"Hey! I'm sitting right here."_

_"Un-fucking-believable. She's just gonna walk outta here?"_

_"Say somethin!"_

_"Fuck you, Morandi!"_

_Ava sped up her pace, walking straight past people she had called her friends for years. Now they were practically spitting on her to get her out the door. She kept her head held high, but someone may as well have lit firecrackers under her shoes._

_"Shut up!" Blanchard roared at last, a vein throbbing in his temple. He never liked to see anyone under his branch go, and wouldn't stand for anything but respectful silence. "Back to work! All of you!"_

_The storm subsided. Ava disappeared around a cubicle and was gone. He had only his memory of the interrogation room to draw upon now: a broken young woman weeping in a chair, blood all over her uniform, spilling her guts to him. She was deeply shaken by what had transpired at the warehouse. And she didn't want to disappoint him, the authority figure, the guardian. Her father must have been a monster. Blanchard heard rumors what the scars on her neck were from._ _Still, what she had done was deplorable, a disgrace to her badge._

_He'd given her a bottom line: tell it to him straight, and he would do all he could for her. As much as he balked at her story and the rumors leaking out to the papers, he knew things the relentless press did not. His permission had relaxed her. As she'd revealed all the details to him, start to finish, he had to restrain himself from throttling her. Then, someone had handed him her psych evaluation, and the picture of a truly flawed human was laid before him._

_And she had come to him now, with her apology and her questions and her attitude, a shield against the world, against her shame._

_But it was not up to him to give her the forgiveness she was so avidly seeking. He was passing her off. Let her be somebody else's problem. He searched his desk for some breath mints, the sudden bad taste in his mouth unsuitable._

_Sucking on it, finding it stale, he muttered, as a sort of prayer or farewell:_ _"Good luck, kid. Maybe you'll find what you're looking for in your second life."  
_

* * *

Joseph would reflect back on their life underground as the 'gray days'. Gray for uncertainty, gray for the ashes on the ground, and gray for the moods they succumbed to so often. It was a kind of incubation period, though incubation implies something is growing, for good or bad. 'Stagnation' may have been a better word for it, because they aren't going anywhere. Physically or spiritually.

That's not to say they haven't had their good moments, the little splashes of bright color on a drab canvas. Both he and Ava read everything available to them in Dutch's library--Jack London, Earnest Hemingway, Robert Frost, Jon Krakauer--torturing themselves with the authors' lush descriptions and memories of the wilderness, of an untouched Earth. Of simpler times. Ava devours the books more voraciously than he does, Joseph still preferring the solemn messages of his Bible. But even he can't resist stretching out on the couch, losing himself in a good read.

Once, she even joined him, sitting on the floor with her back to the couch, his legs just behind her. They had discussed some poems of Frost's. No arguments. No debates. Just calm, civil discussion. He had even told her select things from his childhood: how Jacob used to take him hunting, so he could feed himself and John if their parents failed to bring home food. How he'd survived when he was homeless, without a penny to his name, street preaching and working odd jobs, never losing hope. She listened, and asked few questions, just letting him talk, intrigued by this rare glimpse into his true self. He was a stronger person than she gave him credit for, though she would never say aloud. Like her, a lot of times it seemed he dug his own pitfalls.

Such nights are rare, and feel more like illusions to him, as most good things do. But they instill some sense of hope. At the very least, they both feel like they're on civil terms with one another.

Four months tick by, day after day. Moonless nights. Sunless mornings. All they have to show for their time is a barren garden, now choked with frost as winter rolls down from the scorched mountains, and a dwindling food and water supply. The air is growing colder. Things are changing all around them, and Ava isn't hiding her wanderlust. She wants out. She wants to be with other people. He wants that more than anything, too, but he knows they cannot leave the safety of the bunker just yet.

She says they aren't ready because they don't know what's out there. That's true. But he knows exactly what it will take to carry them through: her sworn devotion to him, to his god, to Eden's Gate. For her to admit he is right and submit. He has tried force, but she met him with more force. He tried apathy, and she put up a wall of silence. Now, they have this passive-aggressive dynamic, which he can't stand, even more than the icy silences. Ava wants to pretend everything is fine with her, that her soul isn't in danger. And he's been slothful, appeasing the Voice by reading to her, gleaning bits of her past, but his actions have been just as lukewarm and fake as Ava's, when she sits down in front of him on Sunday mornings, smiling that phony smile, while he reads.

It turns his stomach. He fears what God will have in store for them, should he continue to put off the inevitable. He fears for her more than himself sometimes, or perhaps he is scared of being alone.

One night, he kneels in his room, candles casting inky shadows on the walls. A razor blade sits on a ceramic plate in front of him. He prays silently,  _Lord, I am at your disposal. I confess, I have succumbed to sloth again. Allow me to atone._

He takes the blade and does so, drawing a fresh, jagged line under the matching scar. He cuts slow, fighting his body's instincts to stop. The semi-deep wound bleeds freely, his tear ducts welling, but he blinks them away. He endures the burning, stinging pain, as he has many times before. As he taught John to, first when they were children, and then later as adults, men with too many flaws, and not enough flaying. It had tempered something in John, or at least taught him some measure of restraint. Still, clamp off one valve, and the pressure finds another way out. Joseph is not ignorant to the sadistic methods his brother had used to let off that dark, redirected energy. But at least he had saved John's life, for a little while.

 _Please, give me something to work with,_ he implores. He sets the bloody razor on a silver plate, fingers stained red as he folds them, holding them to his chin. His vivid blue eyes gaze upwards in earnest.  _Give me a little leeway, Lord, and I will open the dam of her soul for you. I will lay this sinner clean, if it takes me to my last breath. Once I had thought John beyond saving. He was an addict to many vices. But you showed me the way with him. I obeyed every last whim, even when I had the knife to him and he was begging for mercy. Then he saw the light. He learned...as Ava can learn. Show me how to sway her._

He shuts his eyes and takes a long, slow breath, heat swirling in his abdomen.

_And please, give me strength to resist all temptation. I have had...lustful thoughts. I thought I put them to bed, a long time ago, but it seems they have stirred inside. They are gnawing to get out._

_I do not understand. Why torment me now?_ _Why her, of all people?_

 _I need your hands guiding mine, more than ever. I trust in you in all things._ _Amen._

_~_

"God damn it, dog! I'm gonna kill you!"   

Joseph can still hear Ava's blasphemous shouts and curses from the other room. For once not directed at him.

On their way back inside, they were caught in a driving downpour of freezing rain. Boomer, soaked to the bone, coated in sand and muck, flung mud and water all over Ava, fresh out of her suit. When Joseph came back into the washroom, towels in his hands, it looked like a bomb had gone off, with her standing there, wiping her eyes, spitting out dirt, the waterlogged dog proudly panting up at her. It hadn't been the time to remind her that she was the one who  _wanted_ to save the mutt's life, she was the one who'd _insisted_ they open the bloody hatch.

Instead, he left her to shower. Now, she scolds the dog from her room. In the wash room, Joseph picks up her clothes and tosses them into the sink, with the rest of a sort of laundry-soup they've got brewing. Something flutters out from her jeans as he does so, landing on the floor. A piece of paper, folded into a neat square. He wipes his hands on his jeans and picks it up, sliding it into his back pocket without a second thought. He raises his eyes to the ceiling once, in thanks.

Ava pads into the wash room on bare feet. She's dressed, as always, in Dutch's daughter-in-law's baggy clothes, drying off rungs of her dark, wet hair with a towel.

She says, "I've been thinkin. Maybe we should try and check your old compound again. Might have missed somethin."

"There was nothing left when we were there last," he reminds her. He keeps his hands busy, straightening up their hazmat suits, their masks. A magician, redirecting her attention from the wet laundry. He brushes past, bumping shoulders with her, entering the hallway. His little distraction has worked, for now.

"We didn't go over it as well as we could have," she insists, tailing close behind. "We gotta find more food soon. And maybe we'll find other survivors. Even _you_ can't say no to more converts!"

"More?" He wheels around, and she almost collides with him in the cramped hallway. She takes a big step back.

He says somberly, "I knew that place, like the back of my hand. It was my church, my refuge. If there were anything we could use, we'd have found it."

"So we should do what I've been sayin," she pushes, using a civil tone for once. She's been quite amicable with him, ever since their little 'encounter'. She still hasn't unpacked that one yet in her mind. He's already analyzed it and filed it away in his 'evidence I am right in all things' folder.

 _You aren't going to make this easy on me, are you, Lord?_ he thinks, leveling his gaze to take in all of her. Her skin is clean and glistening from the shower, her fit body wasted under those rumpled, secondhand clothes.

"I already told you, our place is here," he says, feeling like a broken record player. All he does is spout scripture and hymns, rebuttals for this woman.

"But what about the other shelters?"

His face turns stern. "You blew up the three largest ones, remember? My siblings' houses. Too bad we don't have those now."

Ava hugs her arms to her chest, fingers of her right hand clenching tightly as a painful memory warps her face. She rubs the tattoo just below her collar bone. She's been doing that a lot, lately, he notices.

"I'm sayin there could be others you didn't _know_ about," she suggests, taking the brunt of his attack. And what was with that look? She rubs at her wet ears with the towel. It reminds him so strongly of his wife's morning routine, he has to turn away.

"Let me think about it," he says at last, his profile to her. He's slimmed down some since their arrival, but has managed to keep up his muscle tone, thanks to their work outside, and the fact that intense midnight sit-ups and push-ups are one way to collapse oneself on a bed and escape reality.

"Don't think too long," she replies coolly, removing the wet towel from her shoulders. She drops it in front of him on the floor with a thump. "Don't blink, either. Or I just may be gone without you."

She lets him consider that, cutting across the floor and into her room in record time. He lets her go, heading for his room instead. He sits on the bed, listening for footsteps.

He unfolds the paper and begins to read. He knows who wrote it, before he can even get to the first word. The handwriting is unmistakable. He glances at the door. Ava is singing country tunes to the dog, bouncing a tennis ball against the wall they share. Her song reverberates throughout the shelter. She doesn't have a promising singing voice, not much better than his, but she can lilt a tune well enough: 

 _"Oh my girl, my giiiiirl, don't liiieeee to me, t_ _ell me where did you sleep last night?_ _In the pines, in the piiiines, w_ _here the sun don't ever shine,_ _I would shiver the whole night through..."_

It's eerie, hearing her voice used for something pleasant. A chill passes through him. The paper lights like a delicate, sickly bird in his hands. While she's distracted, he takes a silent, tense breath, and reads:

_Ava,_

_You'll have to forgive my bluntness: our time is running out._

_In litigation, there's a term we like to use: 'mens rea'. It means 'to have a guilty mind'. I confess, I_ _have done unspeakable things. I won't bother listing them here. But let's not kid ourselves. Your hands are just as stained. You said so yourself, the last time we were together, in that old church. You recall, yes? You told me off, and then, when you were in my arms, you said what was really on your mind. That you were worried about the things on the radio. And the message you heard at my ranch, on the answering machine, while you were sneaking around (wishing I was home?)._

_I had hoped I could bring you there myself, someday. I had hopes for many things between us. I still do. I've been ordered to stop any contact with you, but unless they serve me up with a Cease and Desist, I will never stop trying to reach you. Once, I had told you you're not a good person. The truth is, we are two halves to one Rorschach ink blot, cut from the same dysfunctional cloth._

_Which leads me to the reason I'm writing this to you. It's not too late, Ava. I can still atone you. Give ~~us~~ me that chance. You know it in your heart to be true. If you feel anything for me, you  will do this. I will forgive you for everything. _

_Come to me. Wear white so we know it's you approaching the gates._ _Make sure you come alone._

_Otherwise, the next time I see you, I will not hold back. The Father has made it clear that I am on my last life, so to speak. I can't believe I've made it this far. I am only grateful he has opened my eyes. I can't disappoint him again. I can't harm you. Where does that leave me?_

_It's greedy to say, but I want you. Joseph has his prophecies about us, but you belong here, with me. I'll never tell him, but that much I do know. I am leaving this in your hands. _

_Don't make me do something I'll spend the rest of my life atoning for._

_-John_

_P.S. Did you really need blow up my sign? That walking _Divorce Court _baby Hurk is going to get someone killed. Honestly. That thing wasn't cheap. It makes me wonder what's got you all fired up. Trying to send a message, perhaps?_ _You'd be in far better company here. They are all just as welcome in Eden's Gate. If they see you have a change of heart, you just might save more than your own life._ _Think about it, 'Deputy'. I await your answer._

Joseph reads it again, tracing a finger over his brother's signature, the handwriting as slashed and carefree as his scars had been.  _He knew her name, and didn't tell me. They had a relationship, and he didn't tell me. So much, he kept so much from me. I could have helped you, if only you were honest. You might have survived. If it weren't for_ her.

He twists out of bed and flies for Ava's room, ripping the hanging sheet in her doorway down. 

* * *

_"All right people, we've got the new recruit coming in for her first day," Sheriff Whitehorse informed his deputies at the station. He stood before a whiteboard, feeling less like a lawman and more like a schoolteacher. His class was a bit larger, a bit longer in the leg, but some of them still chattered away or fidgeted in their seats like children._

_"I would like-, yes, Pratt?"_

_Pratt lowered his hand and pushed back his slick, black locks. " Sir, is it true she's transferring from LA?"_

_"Where they just had that shootout?" Hudson added._

_"I see you've done your 'Googling', or whatever you call it," Whitehorse sniffed. "Yeah, she's ex-LAPD. I have no idea what branch. She could have been miles away from that shooting when it happened. You know LA is a big city, right?"_

_Pratt and Hudson exchanged worried looks with the others. The newcomer's paperwork was squeaky clean, and there was no reason to suspect, other than the timing of the transfer. It could be a coincidence. It could also be the LAPD jettisoning bad cargo._

_"All I wanna know is, who's the lucky son-of-a-bitch that's gonna be her partner?" Deputy Hudson asked._

_Whitehorse quirked a bushy eyebrow from under the brim of his hat. "You wanna volunteer? Cuz that sounds like you're volunteering to me."_

_She shrank back in her seat. It reminded him of his own daughter. Whitehorse chuckled._

_"You'll all be swapping turns as her partner," he informed them. A collective groan rose up like flies off cattle on a hot summer's day. "I k_ _now it's not ideal, but I think we need to find the right fit before we make any permanent assignments. And I don't wanna hear any backtalk!"_

_Hudson was about to do just that, her mouth open, when a door slammed from outside. A knock came to their meeting room door soon after. Whitehorse opened it, but it was only Nancy, the radio dispatch worker._

_"Blessed morning!" Nancy chimed to the deputies. They grunted their responses to her, sipping their coffees and keeping their heads lowered. Unfazed, she turned to the sheriff. "Your new recruit has arrived safe and sound."_

_Whitehorse nodded._ _"Have the receptionist send her back, will you? Thanks Nance. Everyone, let's stand up, give her a proper welcome. This is a little too grade-school for my liking."_

_"Aww. Should we circle our desks so no one feels left out?"_

_"Shut it, Hudson."_

_From the front of the station, 'Anne Romano' , her new badge glinting on her uniform, strolled past the portly, curly-haired redhead at reception, who looked like she'd been raised on a steady diet of Wonder Bread and frozen chicken pot-pies. It brought back early memories. Bad memories. 'Anne' was late, about an hour past her shift time, but it wasn't all her fault. She had no goddamned cell service in this backwater county._

_When she finally reached the door to the debriefing room, she stole herself and straightened her spine. Clearing her throat, she knocked once._ _Whitehorse opened it. He took one look at her flustered face, her neat ponytail fraying to pieces from the humidity, her heavy black eyebrows drawn together in a defiant glare, and thought,_ Now there's a lost soul, if I ever saw one. This outta be good.

_"You're late, Deputy Romano."_

_'Anne' watched the most spaghetti-Western motherfucker alive answer the door, his blonde handlebar mustache part Hulk Hogan, part Lorax._ This just keeps gettin better and better.

 _"I got lost," she offered lamely. She wasn't up for big hello's. She knew she would be reprimanded, maybe written up. That's how things had been in the city._ _But, to her shock, Whitehorse smiled a clean, friendly smile, and opened the door wider._

 _"_ _I think we can forgive you for getting lost, this time. Come on in. Meet your new squad mates."_

_At his invitation, she went through the door, surveying the group of deputies in front of her. It was less than half the size of her squad. They all seemed so simple. So innocent. She suddenly felt like a wolf in sheep's clothing, and someone had dumped her right onto the farm._

_If she had thought of them as sheep, she was mistaken. They were tricky foxes, the lot of them. Her_ _first day consisted of pranks, hazing, and running errands for the other deputies. They all called her 'Rook' despite her experience (and she didn't dare defend herself, lest they get curious), or 'city girl' when they were being even more informal. She had spent most of her young adult life trying to convince city folk she was one of them, and now she had to do the opposite. At least she wasn't in jail. It became a sort of mantra:_ At least I'm not in jail, at least I'm not in jail...

_At the end of the day, after completing her first tour of the little town just south of Hope County, Whitehorse found her before she could climb into her car. He shook her hand in a warm, firm grip. It was the first human contact she'd had in months, and she almost jumped from the shock of it._

_"Not bad today, Rook. How're you liking Montana?" Whitehorse's grip was warm, his hands callused._

_'Anne' cringed at her nickname. She knew so little about these people, this place, at times she did feel like a greenhorn. "It's growin on me. Slowly. Bonsai-slow."_

_Before he could reply, Hudson spotted them on her way out. She hollered at them from across the parking lot: "Good job, Rookie! Maybe next time you'll remember to brake at that stop sign."_

_'Anne' blushed, and Hudson laughed and gave her the finger, then climbed into her truck and sped off. 'Anne' grinned from ear to ear. Some of these country folk were all right. She was growing increasingly curious about her new home and the odd bunch living there._

_"Well, wish I could say the hard part's over,"  Whitehorse sighed, hooking his thumbs into his belt. "Came out here to warn you."_

_"Warn me?" she asked, leaning against her car. Everyone else in the county drove a pickup. Something she would have to get used to again. "What's wrong? Got some cougars that need wrangling? Maybe a dangerous pot hole, need's filled?"_

_Whitehorse laughed, as if she said something cute._

_"Because tomorrow, you get to meet the good folks of Eden's Gate. We're doing a drive-through of the northern county. Check up on some citizens, might have run into trouble with the cult."_

_"There's a cult?"_

_"Oh, there's a cult," he repeated her disbelief with a knowing smile. "You think you've seen shit in LA? You ain't seen nothing yet, Rook."_

This just got a hell of a lot more interestin, _she thought darkly, while climbing into her car._ Blanchard, looks like your plan backfired.

_A few more weeks on the force, and she slid into her own comfy niche in Hope County. The HCPD folks were a good bunch. They treated her like family, once they realized she was there to stay. Given her track record with her own family, she kept a healthy distance from them all, with the exception of Hudson, who helped her out and guided her during those first few weeks. They became almost as close as sisters--if sisters knew nothing about each other's pasts, that is. Hudson never asked, and 'Anne' never told._

_Which meant, when John Seed held Hudson, Jerome, and the rest hostage in the church at Fall's End, that he was messing with her family, and she'd be damned if she would lose someone again. Even if it meant hurting someone she loved. Even if it meant tearing her soul apart in the process._

_John's eyes had been wild. Desperate. Fearful. There were unseen forces guiding his hands. She had pleaded to him with her eyes, but he'd ignored her, putting on a show for his cronies. The moment he laid hands on Nick--a new father, an innocent--and cut his skin apart like a butcher at the block, she knew she had to sever whatever feelings she had for him. Thank God she had Jerome and the others there for support, or else she never could have done what followed._

_Of course, it helped (for lack of a better word) that she had done it once before. She'd turned her gun on someone she trusted, even cared for: her ex-partner, Ramirez. She hadn't ever loved Ramirez like she loved John, but they say the second time around, karma bites twice as hard..._

* * *

...When Joseph comes bursting into her room, Ava jolts with a start on her bed. There's a mirror in her lap. She clutches her hairbrush in a death grip. She sees what he's got in his hands, and her eyes widen in a panic.

"Explain," he demands. Low, breathless.

"How did you get that?" She thinks for a second, and it dawns on her. She curses herself for her carelessness. "Never mind. Give it here. It's not yours."

He throws it, and it drifts onto the corner of her bed. He can't bring himself to destroy it. It is the last remnant either of them has of his baby brother. But he can't stand holding it any longer.

"You read it?"

"Of course I did."

She glances from the letter, to him, wishing there were miles between them, instead of a few feet of concrete. 

"You've got no right."

Joseph throws out his hands. "He was  _my_ brother! I think that gives me all the right in the world."

"Is that all?" She steps closer, her hands shaking. Her gun is on a shelf the wash room. It hurts her, that she's afraid of him again.  _God, but I thought we were past this._

She hisses, "If you two were so close, how come he was so damn afraid of you? How come he couldn't tell you the truth?"

"John had his own inner demons. I did my best to help him purge them," he says, leering at her. "Apparently, I didn't do enough."

"Or he knew you're a sociopath and hid things from you!" she snaps. "You took his vulnerabilities, his weaknesses, and you exploited them. You _tore_ him apart, Joseph."

He opens his mouth to counter her vitriol, but stops. He's wounded her; he can hear it in the crack of her voice. He can also hear how much she really does care about John, but somehow that only makes it worse. He can't bring himself to believe she loved him, even though the evidence screams otherwise.

"I could say the same for you," he spits back, pointing. "You're the one who tormented him, who hunted him down and butchered him!"

"Get out," she growls. _"Leave._  You've betrayed my trust. I should have known better. I was an _idiot_ to think you'd changed. But you ain't done. You never will be. It's all you know..."

She swallows a lump, her lip trembling. He steps forward, and she retreats, her eyes roving for a weapon, a way out.

"Ava-" He reaches, not for her, but for the letter.

"GET OUT!" she screams, moving to block him.

He steps back, as if from a physical blow. He heads for the door. Air whooshes past his right ear. The hairbrush crashes into the wall and breaks in half. He departs from her room, and she snatches up the letter with a great sigh of relief, holding it to her chest, choking down the sob that's lived in her chest for weeks on end.

~

She paces her room for a good while, ears primed for Joseph's footfalls. She hears him slamming things toward the back of the bunker; what he's up to, she couldn't care less. Tugging at the roots of her hair, her boots scuff the floor as she circles back and forth, back and forth, an animal in a cage.

"Jesus," she murmurs, shutting her eyes, blinking back tears. Her stomach double-knots itself tightly. "John...oh, Christ. I need to think. I need...air. I need to clear my head."

At the promise of fresh air, she runs for the hatch. She passes Boomer snoozing in the rec-room, curled up on the sofa. Without bothering with her suit, she pushes the hatch open.

She steps outside. Sharp, cold fingers stab through the thin layers of her clothes, into her lungs, snatching her breath away. Blinding white snowfall swarms her vision, the world a chaotic, shaken snow globe. There are six inches of it on the ground already, enough to spill into her boots, freezing her ankles. She can't see ten feet beyond the shelter in this mess. The wind howls in the trees, filling the hollow void with spectral moans and the creaking of dead limbs.

It's over. They're stuck, like the perennials her mother used to plant, underground, until spring. She stands there, her breath clouding the air, letting the frigid air seep some sense into her bones. Soon it numbs her all over. She looks up, at a sky almost as dark as night, lit with the gloom of the distant sun.  _Perhaps it'll never come out again._

Suddenly, right there, standing in the blizzard, she makes up her mind. 

"Fuck it," she says, to the frigid, uncaring world. She nods again like a sage, her head bowed. "Yeah. Fuck this."

Kicking up snow clouds, she runs inside, back to the warmth and light. The hatch rings when she shuts it, snow drifting down the stairs, frost forming star-shaped patterns on the metal. She hears Joseph groan something from the communications room. She stalks down the hallway on light feet, not sure what she's expecting. Rage, maybe. Joseph, throwing things around, spouting Bible quotes, fire and brimstone. Perhaps him standing with gun trained on her, the cuffs dangling from his outstretched hand.  _You're under permanent arrest, sinner._

Instead, she finds him drunk, collapsed in front of the radio, the speaker dangling on its chord over his left shoulder. A bottle of Jameson, three-fourths of the way empty, is upturned by his right hand. He lifts his head when she enters, his eyes glassy, his nose red, the yellow aviators pushed up on his dark hair. A few strands have come loose and hang about his brow. She's forgotten how long it really is, always tied back behind his head in a knot.

"Ava," he mutters, trying to stand. He stumbles and falls back. Ava considers him in this weakened, troubling state. He hasn't touched a drop of alcohol since the men attacked her. For him to lose it now...something is eating at him.

Muttering nonsense, he stumbles and crashes into the radio equipment, clinging to it for dear life. It starts to slide off the counter. She rushes over and pulls his arm across her shoulders, getting under the brunt of his weight.

"Easy," she says, eyeing the gun on his hip. "Just take it easy. Had I known you were throwin a party, I woulda brought a casserole."

Joseph grunts and reaches for the bottle, but she kicks it under the table. While he's distracted, she slips his gun off his hip for good measure, setting it behind something on the counter.

"I'm not...I wouldn't," he slurs. "Wouldn't ever..."

"You couldn't shoot me right now, if you tried."

She jokes with him, but her heart is starting to pound faster. His body is scorching hot against hers, steam rising from her skin. She had been outside in the cold for longer than she'd realized. Her legs strain under his weight. They get a few steps, before his knees give out, and he pulls her down with him to the floor.

"Shit!"

As she lands on the hard concrete next to him, two things shock her. The first: Joseph pulling her by the arm, until they're face-to-face. Not testing the waters (he's had enough to drink), he dives in with full force, pressing his lips into hers.

The second: instead of pulling away, she leans in, with as much fierceness and hunger, returning his kiss with equal passion.

After a few long seconds, they break away for a moment, each sucking in a breath. She wraps her arms around his neck and slides easily into his lap, hooking her legs around his lower back. With this new leverage he groans and pulls her tighter against him, winning a gasp from her. He's bare-chested and warm, such that she can't help but moan softly, wishing she could shed her clothes and get closer. He raises his hands to cup the sides of her face, somewhat clumsy but gentle, and the last of the freezing cold leaves her cheeks.

He holds her like that, their kisses feverish, speeding up. Greedy for more. Heat gathers where their hips conjoin.

"Joseph," she sighs, having déjà vu. "Wait..."

Too preoccupied with her body, he ignores her, rapidly moving his affections to the delicate line of her neck, his fingers weaving into her hair, tilting her head back to give him access. She swoons, drinking in this drastic change like a fine wine. His lips stamp a trail of fire down her skin as he moves for her collar bone, his hair tickling her neck and chin, his beard scratching her clavicle, shooting little chills down her spine and rooting her into his hips.

Then his hand, the one with the strange rosary, fumbles at her shirt, creeping under the bottom hem, and she tenses. The cross brushes against her bellybutton. She knows what comes next. A dreadful temptation, an invitation to forget the world and wrap herself up completely in this man, almost consumes her.

 _Not like this. Not while he's drunk._ She tears away and gets to her feet, panting, her pupils the size of dinner plates. Joseph looses a soft cry of protest, but lets her go, a cold void filling his lap where her body was. He gazes up at her, more than just longing in his drunken eyes. They cloud over, and he slips further into his earlier woes, sliding down against the wall.

"You and John," he mutters, chin sagging against his chest. "I was...I am..."

"I know," she says. She bends down and manages to get him to his feet again, escorting him to his room.

"I just miss him. I...loved John."

"So did I," she says, under her breath.

"I never meant, to hurt him. I did...everything I could, to save him."

She believes him, but doesn't say a word. She lays him on his bed and leaves. When she returns with a glass of water, he's already passed out, one arm hanging off the side of his bed, left knee bent, his legs splayed. It takes more effort than she likes to avoid looking at the crux of his jeans. She sets the glass down, then grabs both his gun and hers and hides them. She returns to her room, and tugs at her hair roots again, as if nothing's changed (save for the redness in her cheeks and chest where his beard's rubbed her). 

Boomer lifts his head once, an oddly satisfied look on the dog's face. She's too tired and confused to give it much thought. Eventually, she grabs the Jameson, helps herself to the rest, and passes out. 

In the morning, when she hears Joseph's first hangover-inspired groan, she enters his room without announcing herself. He's doubled over on the edge of his mattress, spitting into a bucket. Not exactly the picture of inebriated, irresistible masculinity he'd been the night before. The glass of water is untouched by his bedside. He spits into the bucket again, elbows on his knees, head hanging.

His exposed neck makes her recall the touch of his lips, the lustful groans he'd made as she pressed her body into his. She casts her gaze aside, staring at the articles on the wall, fighting the blood rushing to her extremities.

"Come with me," she tells him.

"Why?"

"Somethin you gotta see."

She tries to help him to his feet, but he gets up on his own. He walks stiffly next to her as she leads him to the hatch. She lifts his hand and places it on the flat, frost-ridden door.

"Feel that?"

His haggard face shifts to concern. "Yes."

She wrenches the hatch open a few inches. She can barely do it, there's so much snow on the ground now. At least a foot, maybe more. It drifts down like sand through an hourglass. Joseph stops her from trying to open it further, pulling her arm away. He lets go quickly, and she knows he must remember something from the night before.

"I get it. We are snowed in," he says. "I told you this would happen."

"C'mon." She motions for him to follow her back down the stairs, her boots creating a clamor.

"What is it?"

She doesn't answer. She has him sit at the table with her (setting the bucket next to him, just in case, even though she's the one who feels like she's about to vomit). She takes a hand, reaches across the table, and grasps one of his.

"I'm gonna tell you," she says finally. "Not for you. For John. And because...frankly, because I am fuckin tired, Joseph."

 _Tired of fighting_ , she wants to say, but she swallows it down and lets go of his hand.  _Tired of hiding. Tired of running._

He nods, and sits back, palms resting on his knees. She knows she's about to lend him an arsenal of information to arm himself with. Things he could use to twist against her. She hopes she isn't wrong about the way she feels, just now. Their kiss left her reeling, and only one path has opened up to her now. It's time to take a machete and hack the vines, weeds, and other undesirables out of the way. What treasure or terror she finds at the end of that beaten path, she's ready to face.

"I want you to know what happened, in Los Angeles," she starts. She lets go of his hand. Licks her lips and swallows, pushing tufts of her hair behind her ears. She raises her eyes to his. No surprise or disbelief there, only patience and dark circles.

"...And with John. Will you listen? Do you still want to know? Understand what that means. You may hear things. Things that'll make you hate me."

His answer comes, not immediate, as she'd expected. He thinks for a few moments, head lowered in thought.

"Yes," he murmurs. "Go on."

Ava sighs, and closes her eyes, picturing John's smiling, devilishly handsome face. Those bright blue eyes, so deceptive yet charming.

She opens them again, and for a second thinks she's seeing a ghost. But it's only Joseph, watching her intently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hard to believe, but only two chapters left (maybe three)! I'm gonna take my time writing the next one, to make sure it all goes *ahem* smoothly. For the most part. >;) 
> 
> As much as I'm dying to write the next chapter, I'm also super f'ing stoked about the ending. It's something I've been gnawing at the bit to get to, ever since I first came up with this story idea. My deepest gratitude and thanks to all who have continued to read and comment. I will do my very best not to disappoint in the conclusion.


	9. Hand of God, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the winter snow piles down above them, Ava recounts the harrowing details of what happened in Los Angeles.

_The first thing to draw Ava's attention, as they set foot in the warehouse, was the light. It cut through the boarded up windows and manifested in ghostly pools at their feet. The deeper they followed Manuel into the building, the more darkness swallowed the daylight. Along the way, someone had lit some red and white wax candles. Judging by the puddles of melt, they'd been there for some time. And they weren't alone._

_Morbid offerings encircled each one: bloodied chicken feathers, eggshells, animal bones, string, tar symbols painted all over in chaotic patterns. She even thought she saw what looked suspiciously like human finger bones, but she couldn't be sure. They weren't exactly stopping to take photos._ _The scene caused all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck to stand up at once._

_"What's this voodoo stuff?" she asked, failing to completely mask her alarm._

_"Not voodoo,"  Deputy Ramirez answered. "Cult of Santa Muerte: Saint Death. Look. The etchings, on the floor, there. Protective symbols against police."_

_He nodded to the symbols, and to a statuette of a grim reaper, about a foot high, with a skeleton's face and a woman's breasts, hips, and open, black robe. She held a scythe in one fleshless hand, in the other, a round object, perhaps a globe or a moon, they were walking to fast for Ava to tell. The reaper's arms were drawn open, as if beckoning them to come and envelop her fatal embrace._

_"Great," Ava breathed, tearing her eyes away. She focused on her surroundings, on the two men dragging their feet between her and Ramirez. "Guess the warranty on those symbols expired, huh?"_

_Distracted, Ramirez grunted something in reply. Their boots crunched glass and plaster. The musty warehouse was chalked with scents of drywall, tinged with cigarettes and sweat. The tobacco in the air, the witchcraft fetishes, the occasional footprint in the dust, were the only evidence humans reclaimed the abandoned space. Other than the two recently-disarmed thugs with their hands zip-tied behind them. One of them glanced back at Ava, muttering something to his friend._

_"Nice and easy, gentlemen," Deputy Ramirez instructed in low, halted Spanish. "Don't make any sudden moves."_

_"¡Métetelo por el culo, cabrón!" one spat at his feet._

_Her partner turned to Ava and flashed a sardonic grin. "Precious, isn't he?"  
_

_She gave no response. Her magnetized eyes were drawn ahead, watching Manuel closely as they navigated a maze of old shelving and skiffs, towering as high as the three-story ceiling. The rafters above rained down dust and detritus. Her finger rested in the ready position, just above the trigger along the side. They should have called for backup by now, but that would jeopardize their score, and their greed was too great._

_Somewhere along the eight minute mark, her nerves sparked and ignited. "How much farther, Manuel?"_

_He looked back at her, his cornrows swaying. He was sweating, a bit of a pallor about his face. He raised his hand and rubbed at his bandana._

_"_ _Stash is just around the next bend,_ campesina. _"_

_The two guards exchanged glances at the nickname, but whether they understood the rest, Ava was forced to assume. She began to hear more noises. Not industrial ones, but human voices, harsh, low commands in Spanish she couldn't discern. She knew there would be others there, knew vaguely the layout of the building, but the little warning voice in the back of her head went from a whisper to a scream._

_"Ramirez," she hissed. "This place is too big. This is takin too long. We should leave. Let this one go."_

_The deputy didn't react to her reluctance, only saying, "Patience is a virtue, partner."_

_She frowned. He was too calm for her liking. Smelling danger, blind to it, she had no choice then but to travel into the den of a predator she was unfamiliar with. Her eyes grew wide and dark, her legs ready to spring, ears primed for the first noise. She wasn't a superstitious woman, even though she had grown up around it (Papa and Mama had both thrown salt over their shoulders when they spilled the shaker)._

_Reaching behind her, she slowly pulled the bunched, sweat-soaked t-shirt down across her jackrabbit tattoo. She was no coward, but something about the statue, the fetishes made her want to turn around and forget the place ever existed._ _A few months later, when she first set out in Eden's Gate territory, the spectacle she saw in the warehouse looked like an elementary school art class by comparison. Right then, in the dark, it unnerved her almost beyond comprehension._

* * *

Ava pauses. She shivers, rubbing the sides of her arms. Sitting cross-legged in a dead woman's jeans, she turns her hazel eyes on Joseph, wearing a dead man's clothes. There's a familiarity in her haunted gaze. It shames him, for her to look upon him like that.

"What's the matter?" he asks. "Why'd you stop?"

Hugging herself, she recalls, with a distant sort of horror, "You, your followers. You did things...things that'd give the cartel butchers a run for their money. Burnin families alive, feedin 'em to their kids."

While she pauses, Joseph prays under his breath, "For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."

She ignores him, her voice steadily rising in anger. "You know what that fucking Cook of Jacob's did, to Jess Black and her family? To my _friend_? Should I tell you, about how Jess could hardly sleep at night, the awful things she moaned when she did?"

Whether he truly cares or not, he says nothing, fingers gripping his crucifix absently. This is still _her_ confession. He doesn't want to open the floodgates in another direction.

"Stringin people up. Throwin them off cliffs! I saw things, while on the force in LA, but they don't hold a candle to Eden's Gate."

He has no response for her. He seems lost in thought, but far from showing any remorse. She might have felt disgust, had it not been in such short supply. The Ava of a few months ago might have attacked him, for such a silence. Instead she can't even meet his eyes.  _They all died anyway; what was the point in tryin to protect them? Why stay angry?_

Her anger has kept her alive and carried her through everything, and she can't let that fire die easily. They sit like that for a while, the beginnings of a fight stirring, neither willing to make the first move. The metal walls creak and groan. The generator hums. It's getting cold inside the shelter, the longer the snow falls. Ava's still shaking, her flesh broken into goosebumps. Joseph rises, gets a blanket from the sofa, and offers it to her--some hideous orange and yellow crocheted thing, probably an antique of Dutch's.

"Here," he says, his arm extended.

She reaches out and takes it, careful not to touch him, and wraps herself in it. The weight comforts her, somewhat. What _doesn't_ comfort her, however, is Joseph, as he sits back down, awaiting her to continue.  _He committed mass murder, and you kissed him. What the hell is wrong with you? You should have killed him on day one, for all those people that died. Their families. Your friends._

A gentler voice overtakes the first one, whispering, _He also saved your life, more than once. God, the way he looks at you sometimes, like he wants to embrace you and never ever let go..._

Her fingers twist into the fabric of the blanket. Does he remember all of last night? What is he thinking about, this very moment? She looks up, and her heart almost freezes.

Joseph is weeping quietly.

His hand is placed over his eyes so she can't see. But there's no mistaking the light, airy sobs escaping his lips. His face has gone red with shame. It's the first time she's ever seen him cry, and she doesn't know how to handle it. It almost makes her want to cry herself.

After a few tremulous breaths, he recovers. When he speaks at last, his voice is nasally, but sincere. "You think I _wanted_ all of this to happen? You think I took pleasure in it?"

He takes his hand away from his eyes, wiping tears before letting his aviators fall back into place. He looks at her in earnest. She still can't face him.

"You must think I am a monster," he says.

She bites her lower lip, a piece of hair falling across her eyes. Almost says something, but changes her mind.  _That makes two of us._

"Can...I ask you somethin?" she whispers.

"Yes."

The question comes out of her before she even knows it's there.

"How old were you, when the Voice first spoke to you?"

She wants to know exactly how long he's been dealing with this, or how long he's been crazy, she still hasn't decided on the details. But he doesn't seem to want to answer. Now her wrath does rear its ugly head, and she narrows her eyes.

"I'm baring my soul to you over here, Joseph, and I feel like I hardly know-"

"-I was a child," he interrupts, staring off into the distance. "My father found a _Spiderman_ comic. He beat me so badly, I couldn't hear for three days. It spoke to me when I could hear nothing else, not even my brothers' voices."

Ava sits back.

"Jesus."

Her expression is pained. She draws the blanket tighter around herself. "Did it at least comfort you?"

"God has always been there for me. I thought maybe it was an imaginary friend, at first. But imaginary friends cannot predict the future. They cannot perform miracles."

 _Or stop the end of the world,_ she thinks. _Or explain why I can't be angry with him. Maybe I'm losin my mind._

"Never did have one of those," she muses, tracing the wooden rings along the table with a finger. She doesn't see patterns in the wood, or faces, or designs. Only the line that's right in front of her nail. "Never had time for an imagination."

"I know. That's one of the things I admire about you."

She looks up, confused. He smiles gently: a rare, genuine thing. She all but squirms in her seat, under that admiring gaze. There's such compassion there, such depth, she feels like she could drown in it.

"You're straightforward. You don't listen easily, but when you do, you hear it with your entire being."

Her chair scrapes across the floor as she pushes it back, rising to her feet. Rattled, she goes to the sink and pours them each a glass of water, setting one in front of him. He sits there patiently waiting for her to settle, amused that such a tiny pebble of a compliment had such a broad ripple effect on her. She's not used to praise, especially from him.

"I had better keep goin, before I lose my nerve," she says finally. She throws herself down in the chair and takes a slow sip of water, her stomach churning. "Where did I leave off?"

"You were in a maze."

"The maze," she repeats, going back to tracing patterns in the woodgrain. "It wasn't long before we found the stash. One of the guys up and ran. I gave chase."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

"Then what happened?"

"While I was cuffin the guy, someone thrust a bag over my head. Ramirez shouted somethin, and I knew we were screwed."

Joseph leans forward.

"What did he say?"   

* * *

 _"Lying bastards!" Ramirez screamed._ " _We had a deal, motherfuckers!_ "

_Ava couldn't see. Couldn't fight. As soon as they got the bag over her head, plunging her world in black, and pressed a gun against her spine, she'd dropped her service weapon and held her hands in the air. The man struggling at her feet kicked her once in the leg, and she almost went down._

_"Bitch," he swore in English. She could hear him limping to his feet. "Now you get what's comin to you, pig."_

_"Move," someone barked at her. "Now. Or I open a hole in your guts."_

_They shoved her forward, the tip of the gun digging into her spine. She could still hear Ramirez grunting and protesting. Somewhere farther off, it sounded like Manuel was putting up a fight, too. She prayed to whatever god would listen that he would stop. There came a thud, and a sharp yelp, and his fight was over. They led her into another room, the change in the echoes of their footfalls, shorter and louder, alerting her that they were in a smaller room. They did not bind her hands, but she heard the hollow zip of duct tape. Ramirez's muffled growls. Labored breathing, through someone's nostrils, possibly Manuel's._

_A hundred thoughts ripped through Ava's mind, none of them particularly helpful. She was still relatively calm, even blind and with the gun against her, her breaths measured and slow. She walked where the_ narco _told her to walk. They stopped suddenly, and still she wasn't afraid. The burlap bag was pulled off her, and she was left blinking in what looked to be a white room, before she realized it was all plaster and dust and bird droppings. They were in a room with an open ceiling, the glass long since busted out. Daylight poured in, harsh, invasive. Pigeons cooed and flapped above them in a swarm, their droppings raining down eternally, coating the floorboards and walls in feathers and white filth._

_Before her, Ramirez and Manuel were bound to chairs, their mouths duct-taped. A pistol sat on a table between them. As soon as Ava saw it, the fear swallowed her. This wasn't some random shootout, some drug bust gone horribly wrong. This was theater. This was personal._

_"Turn around," the gunman ordered, in slow English. She did. One of the thugs from the stash room had his gun on her, but she stared directly into his brown eyes, instead of the black hole aimed at her heart. "Don't make any moves, or I kill the kid first. Then the pig. Then I do you._  Comprende?"

_She nodded once. The man backed away, toward the door they walked through. There were broken windows to her left, a solid brick wall in front of her and to her right. No where to go._

_"My boss wants a word," the man said. He moved aside, revealing a darkened figure in the doorway. It took a step forward._

_She stood still as stone. Ramirez's eyes widened at the sight of the shadow-figure. Manuel's head sagged against his chest, blood running down the side of his face. He was breathing, she could tell by the little bubble of blood inflating and deflating in his nose. She would have laughed, under different circumstances. But when the figure spoke, Ava gave it her full attention, her face contorting into a scowl._

_"You know I came all this way, just to see you two in person?"_

_A man stepped into the light. Bald, Hispanic, he wore all-black, including a suit jacket, but with no shirt underneath. His torso was mapped in dark green and black tattoos, splashes of crimson. As he walked closer, she could make out the biggest one on his chest: an Aztec priest, holding up the bleeding, severed head of a sacrifice, the chest of his prone victim cut open on a stone table. A temple rose in the background, a psychotic blend of spirituality and violence._

_"I come here on behalf of the man I work for," he announced. He raised his handgun at her. "You think you can steal from us, and get away with it? I don't care if you're cops. If you're American police. You fucked up."_

_He spat. Ava tried to take a step back, but he thrust his gun arm out, snarling._

_"Don't move! 'Freeze', isn't that what you pigs say?" He chuckled, switching from pure anger on a dime. "You stole from my boss. He isn't too happy 'bout it. So here's what we're gonna do-"_

_"Mmmmph!" Ramirez screamed into his duct-tape. The man turned to him, an unnerving smile on his face._ _Manuel was waking up, groaning softly. He raised his head, took in everything, and all the fear left Ava and found a new home in the whites of the boy's eyes._

_"By the way, your so-called partner here tried to rat you out," the man said. He flicked his gun at Ramirez. "Couldn't have you or the boy talkin, so he arranged to have you silenced."_

_"Bullshit," Ava growled. "He would never murder anyone!"_

_"No bullshit, lady. He wouldn't do the murdering. He meant for you to take a bullet during this bust. Wasn't countin on my man Juan to take off running. Your partner wanted you and the boy to die in a crossfire, and he would call for backup, and come out lookin like the hero. Made some expensive deals with my guys, and they went straight to me afterwards. That's how I found out. He was gonna make my own men shoot you."_

_The stranger tsk'd and shook his bald, tattooed head. Ava looked at Ramirez. She didn't want to believe the man, over the partner she'd trusted with her life for years. Whose house she had eaten dinner at, numerous times. Whom she had spent uncounted hours in their cruiser with, talking about life, about family, about regrets, about nothing at all. Ramirez shook his head vehemently. Manuel glared at him from over his duct-tape, his entire body quivering, skin slick with cold sweat. A pigeon feather drifted down and landed on his bare shoulder._

_"Fuck," she groaned. "This is fucked."_

_It was making more and more sense, the longer she thought about it (and she didn't have much time to begin with). How calm and sure of himself Ramirez had been, even though he should have been shitting bricks earlier. The fact that he'd known the dealers had direct cartel connections and hadn't told her until today. He was smart. He knew if he hadn't said anything at all, the moment she'd seen the fetishes, the candles, she would have turned their asses around and fled. Better to wait until they were about to make the most money of their lives, when there was no backing out. And Ramirez had distanced himself from her lately. Claimed he was busy running his house. Too many coincidences adding up..._

_"Was Manuel in on it?" she asked. "The boy? Was he in on it?"_

_"Nah. Kid's just another pawn, in all this," the tattooed man answered. He turned to face Manuel, and the teen, to his credit, shot him an evil glare. "I heard good things about you. Shame it had to be like this. I would have hired you on, as one of mine. Maybe if she spares you I still will."_

_"Fuck you!" Manuel swore through the tape, clear enough to be heard._

_The man spread his arms, shrugging._

_"So, here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna let you walk outta here with one of them._ Solo uno _," he said. He backed towards the only exit, his gun still on her. "Pick it up."_

_Ava turned to the pistol on the table, but hesitated._

_**BLAM!** He fired a shot, right into the floorboards by Manuel's feet. The bullet sent splinters and pigeon dung flying. Manuel flinched, eyes slammed shut, and whimpered._

_"Pick up the fuckin gun," the man repeated icily, but she was already storming over to the table and snatching it up, the metal cold and foreign against her palm. "You shoot at me, my man here kills all of you."_

_Ava backed away from the two hostages. Time seemed to come in skips, and reality stretched and the room warped in her vision. She wanted to double over and vomit. The reek of the pigeons, the way both hostages pleaded to her with their eyes, the dread gathering at the base of her spine, all of it congealed in her stomach. As if she had swallowed a tremendous stone, seeped in guilt._

_"Raise the gun. Make your choice," the stranger instructed. "Kill one. You got a minute to decide. Starting...now."_

_He tapped his watch._

_Ava could only stare. Her mind sought another way, an escape, but it was a rat trapped in a maze full of dead-ends. There was only one way out. Ramirez already knew it. He had turned his face to the ceiling. Manuel kept glancing from her, to the man, to Ramirez, and back, in a maddening circle. Above them, the pigeons had all gone still and quiet, as if they were aware of what they were about to witness._

_She ran up to Ramirez, and put her hand on his tape, looking at the stranger. He nodded to her, smiling, enjoying her panic. She ripped the duct tape off his mouth first. "Is it true?"_

_"Of course not!" her partner cried._

_Manuel screamed something, rocking in his chair. She ripped off his tape next. "He's lyin!"  
_

_"Shut up!" Ramirez roared. "You don't know shit, kid!"_

_"Lying how?" Ava asked. "Be quick."_

_Manuel swallowed. "He came to me alone and asked me if I wanted to make triple my normal rate. Said you were gonna step out soon, for good. He said it was cuz of your sister dyin!"_

_She glared at Ramirez. She never once talked about backing out. She went in for her own reasons: to pay for her mother's cancer treatment, to send her to a holistic place in the mountains, the kind the celebrities went to and always seemed to get better from (never mind that it was all useless, her mother had died anyway, hadn't she?). To help her sister into rehab (another useless gesture but she couldn't say she didn't try). Get her family's debt collectors off her back._

_She never said shit to him about quitting._

_"It's not true!" her partner roared. "That little fucker is lying!"_

_Ava froze, unbelieving what she was hearing. She had never known Manuel to lie. The kid was a lot of things, but he never had a reason to be deceptive. Not with her. He was never shy about who he was, what he did for a living. Manuel was straight. Her partner was looking more and more crooked by the second._

_And her wrath was building._

_"Shut up," she barked at Ramirez, turning away. "Go on, Manuel."_

_"It was fuckin weird, I dunno man!" Manuel stammered. "He was sweating in the car. Weird dudes on the corner while we talked, like they needed proof the conversation was goin down or some shit. They weren't local. They were this dude's guys."_

_"He was setting you up, too," she breathed. She turned all of her body toward Ramirez. She looked back at the man. "Do I have your word?"_

_"On my honor, pig," he declared. "You will walk outta this room with the man you spare. Ten seconds. Nine...eight..."_

_"Don't do this!" Ramirez yelled, his voice cracking. "Ava!"_

_She slapped the duct tape back over his mouth, unable to stomach his pleading._  Please God don't make me do this please please please.

_"Seven...six..."_

_Manuel fought against his binds, rocking the chair, knocking it over and falling onto his back._

_"Five...four...three," the man counted, almost gleefully._

_Ava planted her boots in the wood between the hostages. It was no use. There was no way out. At the last second, she considered turning the gun on herself, sparing her from the fate of deciding between two lives, on the word of a ruthless gangster._

_"Two...one!"_

_Instead, she leveled her gun, and made her choice._

* * *

"It was the same later on," she says, somber. "With John."

But she will not say more on that matter. Not yet.

"Who was it?" Joseph asks. "Who did you shoot?"

"He came to me, you understand?" she defends, throwing the blanket to the floor. She gets up, leaning against the table, feeling like she's back in her Lieutenant's interrogation room, with blood all over her uniform, answering his questions with her head in her hands.

" _He_  heard me talkin to my sister, on the phone, during a party. I told her I didn't have any goddamned money and she'd have to find another way to score. I was half drunk. I went out on the porch for a cigarette. He sidled on up to me and started talkin about money, how much easier things could be. Mama had had a relapse and was in the hospital again. I told him to sleep it off, flicked my cigarette and left. That should've been the end of it."

She shakes her head at her past self, marveling at her own stupidity. But she's never once wished she could take it all back.

"He got Manuel and I in a squad car, alone. Just the three of us. Started plannin the heist before I even knew what was happening. I was tired of the same cycle, seein these kids shot or doin a long stretch for homicide. It looked like a way for both sides to win. The first couple of busts were cakewalks. Manuel took care of his younger siblings, made sure they went to school and had food, clothes, toys. He never bragged about his wealth, never boasted. Not like Ramirez, with his goddamned fancy cars and watches and parties."

"Is that why you chose him?" Joseph asks, remembering the bliss-ghost with the bullet lodged in his head. "Your partner?"

She shoves the chair over, spreading her arms wide.

"Course I did! The kid was young. Fulla promise. My partner was a coward," she concedes, with an exhausted exhale, her shoulders heaving. She lowers her arms. "A coward. And he died that way, lookin up at me, beggin me to spare him."

* * *

_Her gun went off. The pigeons above exploded into a frenzy, flapping, raining down feathers, dust, drops of dung. One plopped unceremoniously on her dead partner's shoulder, his torso sagging forward. She would hate pigeons and go out of her way to avoid them for the rest of her life._

_The rest was a blur, and not by choice. She'd done it. She'd killed him. The exit lights should have lit up, the two_  narcos _stepping aside to let them pass_. _But she knew the rules, the real rules of the game they were playing. The tattooed man was grinning and holding up a phone. He'd been filming them the entire time. Never one for cameras, she'd never felt such a rage boiling inside her. It wiped away all her fear instantly, though her disgust with herself almost drove her mad._

Fucker. I'll wipe that smile clean, if it's the last thing I do.

_"Said I'd let you leave the room." The man finished his recording, tucking his phone in his pocket. "Didn't say shit about you leavin the building, though."_

_Fucking psycho. She barely heard him, she was so pissed. At some point, she hurled the useless gun at the two, shoving Manuel for the windows with all her strength, before ducking behind Ramirez's body. The stranger with the tattoos and his man opened fire. Groaning, using all her strength, she_ _pulled Ramirez's corpse on top of her, one last act of charity from the 'family' man._

_Bullets tore into cement, plaster, rotted wood. Manuel took the hint when she'd shoved him, diving headfirst through the old windows. They caved before his weight, but it wouldn't have mattered if they were bullet-proof, that kid was getting out of there, hell or high water._

_When the gunmen paused to get closer and move the body, she hooked out her foot and stumbled the first man, twisting up and snatching his gun. She shot him in the leg, and when he went down, she finished the job and killed him. The tattooed man fled the room, but he was far from gone. She went after him, seeing red, Manuel disarming another thug at some point and joining her in the foray._

_She grabbed the teenager by the shirt collar and pulled for dear life. And pulled._ _She wouldn't stop pulling him, not even when Manuel was cursing for her to let go, muttering that he was a man, that she was embarrassing him, as if they were at a school dance instead of fighting for their lives. Before the end, the warehouse floors were coated with more than pigeon shit and dust. Blood soaked the floorboards. Four thugs in the building lay dead, by her hand or Manuel's, she would never remember. The tattooed man seemingly disappeared back into the darkness he'd come from._

 _Perhaps he had been a figment of her imagination._ _Ava had thought so, as they ran from the back of the building into near-blinding daylight, towards their getaway truck. Deputy Reid had already called for backup, and she heard sirens in the distance. They were out. They were free._

_She wasn't done._

_"Where are you goin? Are you insane?! Here comes the cops! Er, the real ones, I mean."_

_She ran back inside, Manuel screaming after her, Deputy Reid driving the boy away, to safety._

_Inside the labyrinth, the tattooed man was waiting for her, standing in front of the candles, a human skull with some of the flesh remaining at his feet._

_"_ Tocas la oscuridad _," he uttered, in his native tongue. He picked up the skull and hurled it at her._

_"It touches you back!"_

_They both fired fired. Two shots. One went through the skull, striking him in the neck. His bullet sank into the floor by her boot, missing her by inches. She fell to her knees anyway, reeling, as the man choked on his own blood. It spurted from his collapsing body and extinguished the candles, and everything went dark._

* * *

Ava stops pacing the rec-room. Breathing heavily, she faces Joseph.

"I don't remember the car ride back to the station," she says, running her hands through her hair nervously. "Everything's a blur. I came to at some point, in an interrogation room, Lieutenant Blanchard screamin down my neck, a cup of whiskey in my hand."

She shrugs, throwing her arms up once and slamming them down at her sides.

"But there you have it. There's your confession, _Father._ I killed my crooked partner. I saved a drug dealer. He was back on the streets in less than week, you know. Money's money."

She laughs, a hollow, weak sound, and puts her hands on her hips. She raises her face to ceiling, as he has so many times, but she laughs up at it like God's just told her the worst joke in the world.

"Guess we don't have that problem anymore, do we? Manuel'd probably still be there, barring the nuclear apocalypse. What was it you said? Things repeat themselves? But go ahead. I _welcome_ your judgment. You know why?"

"Why?" He humors her, still sitting by the table. Watching her spectacle, calm.

"Cuz no matter what I've done, Eden's Gate was worse," she declares. She juts her finger at him, letting the words fly like hornets. "In _every_ way! I've been lyin to myself, sayin I'm just as fucked up as you, worryin you'll hate me, you'll judge me. Now that I've told it, I feel _glad_ about what I've done! So don't expect me to beg for your forgiveness."

"Is that what you want?" he asks simply, splaying both hands. "What _do_ you want, Ava?"

"What do...I want?" she repeats. Swallows. "I want my old life back. I want my partner and friends alive. I want the world back the way it was. I want-"

She loses her words and doubles over, smothering her own mouth to keep from throwing up. Her hair slides down her shoulders and covers her face.

"-I wanna be _alone,"_ she moans, through her fingers. "Leave me alone."

He gets up and all-too-happily grants her wish, striding past without another word. He has no words to spare for her. Instead of victorious, she feels more wretched than ever to be alive. 

And Joseph, standing in his bedroom, has never felt more alone. But it isn't over. Because she still has John's story to tell. He's been trying to pry all of this out of her, the entire time. Now, he isn't sure he wants to hear it.

_God's got a funny sense of humor, oh yes he does._

He takes the gun from his bed stand, turns it over in his hand once, and tucks it in the waistband of his jeans. He hides it under his black t-shirt. He sits on the bed with a creak of mattress springs, facing the wall of the dead: John, Jacob, Faith.

Everyone's there, except him.

( _continued in Part 2)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally felt confident enough to post this. Still working on part two and the last chapter, but I wanted to give people something to read! Decided it needed to be split up into two parts.


	10. Hand of God, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second half of Ava's story unfolds, and the two must make a choice about how they will live with one another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another (seemingly) heavy chapter, but the smut starts 3/4 of the way through. I tried to make this one lighter than the last, sorry!

Moses, can you  
Carry, heavy  
'Cause I can't take it  
Can't hold on much longer

Moses, can you  
Help me carry the burden  
Moses, lift my arms 'cause I can't  
Hold on and carry all the weight

Can you guide me?  
'Cause you're so strong  
'Cause I can't see nothing at all  
'Cause my eyes are burning like the sun

Burning like the sun  
Burning like the sun

-"Moses", Chelsea Wolfe

* * *

He returns to the rec-room an hour later, to find Ava sipping vodka from a coffee mug, a cigarette burning orange and low between her fingers. Everything seems awash in a new, harsh light. The blanket has returned to her shoulders, and Boomer is curled up at her feet. The dog raises his brindle head, sniffing in his direction, brown iris glinting from the center of the black eye-patch. Cold air caresses Joseph's bare arms, his neck. Soon they will have to turn the heat on, burning more fuel. But for now, they put up with the lower temps as long as they can.

Joseph finds it sobering. Ever his opposite, Ava takes a generous sip of spirits, eyeing him from the top of the ceramic rim. He leers at the alcohol, then the cigarette, shooting her a disapproving look. At some point in the past, such a look from him would have preceded fiery scripture readings, severe punishments. He permits these things now, only because he's interested in her confession.

And she knows it, too.

She takes a slow, savory drag from her cig, blowing smoke vertically. It hangs in a cloud around the carnival-style string lights above them. At times they do feel like they're in a circus sideshow. _The world's worst freak show: the sanctimonious megalomaniac cult leader and his last nonbeliever, the murderer of his family, to-night, in the same cage! Get your tickets; step right up! You don't wanna miss this..._

Nothing funny about this show, Joseph thinks. He sits directly across from her, his hands on his knees. The gun forces him to sit up straighter than usual, but Ava doesn't notice. And besides, the faded black t-shirt he wears sinks down at the collar, and she's distracted by a glimpse of wingtips: the twin sparrow tattoos, and between those, the enticing lines of his upper pectorals.  _Wonder if he had that done before or after his wife died. He never did tell me her name._

"What's with the sour look? John smoked, y'know," she informs him, taking a drag.

She mistakes his disgust at her smoking. Smoke curls from her wine-colored lips, her eyelids heavy and lazy, and his gaze lingers a little too long, but she's passive, wrapped up in a memory, and doesn't notice. Again, when she's not glaring at him, laughing off his attempts at saving her, when he catches her unawares, he can't help but think of her as anything but pretty. The agony in the pit of his stomach eats away like acid, mixes with heat swirling behind his Lust tattoo.

"Caught more'n a few of your Peggies suckin on cancer sticks at the guard posts, too. They took a lot of your rules pretty light. Especially up at that ranch. Some of em weren't half bad. They threw a mean party, to say the least."

She fawns distantly, recalling more than the taste of cigarettes. Her joke fails to make him laugh. Those moments are rare as blue moons, but she knows he has a sense of humor, buried somewhere under all that seriousness. He ignores the insinuation, even though he'd heard rumors that John slept with women, that he'd thrown secret, drug-addled parties, when he thought no one was watching.

"John had many vices he couldn't part with," Joseph says icily. "I tried to help free him of them. But they kept... _insisting."_

She lets that implication sink in. 

"I believe you," she says, nodding. She flicks her ashes onto the floor. With a loud, interrupting sneeze, Boomer gets up and pads out of the room, having had just about enough cigarette odors for one (canine) lifetime.

She chuckles sadly, shaking her head. "I also believe you loved your brothers, that you weren't just using 'em for your own _selfish_ needs."

The idea of him being selfish, when all he's ever done is commit himself fully and make sacrifices to his god, is laughable, almost rage-inducing, but he lets her continue. Under the table, his hand creeps to his waistband. She says something that gives him pause.

"Which means, this is gonna make this harder for you to hear."

Sincerity in her voice, when a few seconds ago she'd been a prideful, almost apathetic vulgarian. She caps the vodka bottle and takes another drag. She spies on him through the haze of smoke, searching his darkened face for signs of what he's thinking. _Penny for your thoughts, Joseph._ She hates that he's never an open book, but this is supposed to be her airing of grievances, not his. 

"I am ready to hear it," he says, pulling his chair closer to mask the sound of the gun's hammer clicking into place. His heart thunders in his ears. "Tell me, about John's final moments."

She takes another slow sip from her mug, thoughtful. Sets it down. She tosses her cigarette butt into it, black ashes streaking white porcelain. She's steadying herself, trying to find the right words, for once not speaking directly from her guts.  _As if she knows without knowing._

Joseph's certain he's about to hear some wild, careless seduction story, one that led to his brother's downfall. How this woman, this succubus, this dancing Salome, led his poor, sinful baptist out of the light of God. He took staunch pride in the redemption, the rescue of his baby brother, in the endless nights staying up late, guiding John through withdrawal and sickness. Thrusting a shovel in his hands and digging bliss gardens by his side, teaching him the value of hard work, the humility in blistered hands. The first time John clumsily baptized someone, soaking his expensive clothes (acquiring a few leeches, which they'd peel off him later, laughing like the kids they used to be), how he beamed at Joseph as he praised his efforts. When he emerged from his plane, his first flight in years, sober and bright. John was supposed to accompany him, through the end days, and beyond.

Now, he is a memory. A ghost on his wall. So though Joseph's torn in two, if he detects even a _whiff_ of gloating from this woman, an _iota_ of anything but sorrow and grief, he won't hesitate to betray everything and silence her.  

A fond, sad smile dawns across Ava's lips, and the drumming in his ears lessens. She reminisces, almost to herself:

"It began with that video broadcast of his. 'The Power of Yes', or whatever goofy name he gave it. We made fun of it ruthlessly, Grace, Addie, and me. Til he brought Hudson on the screen, anyway. But I took one look at him, and was smitten, from the first to the last. Grace caught onto us, but didn't say a word until..."

* * *

_"...If you go out that door, you better keep on fucking walkin."_

_Grace's furious words chased the Deputy across the church like a demon. The Resistance members were all gathered in Pastor Jerome's parish at Fall's End: Grace, Pastor Jeffries, Joey Hudson, Mary May, Hurk, Addie, Jess Black, Sharky. Nick Rye was at home with his wife and child, but they had his radio on standby. He was taking a much-needed break after their disastrous raid on the statue at Angels Peak._

_When the smoke cleared after that battle, the Deputy disappeared for a few days, as had, rumors circulated, John Seed._ _Then, one day, she turned up, as if nothing had ever happened, without a scratch on her. For the second time, she'd escaped John, unscathed. People were starting to connect the dots. And they didn't like the picture they were seeing. When one of their best fighters got romantically involved with the psycho torturing and murdering people, feelings, like rattlesnakes, tended to get accidentally stomped on._

 _Deputy Ava stopped, the scuffed, wooden floorboards squeaking under her boots. She craned her neck to glance behind._ _Her friends' heated stares pierced through her, as they stood over an assembly of documents and maps. Newspaper clippings. Obituaries._

_With a thud of army boots, Grace came down the center aisle and halted, arms folded across her body armor. She suffered some of the worst of John's treatment. Her home, burned to the ground. Her Father's grave, almost desecrated. Watching friends fall to the Peggies. There was no question where her loyalties were. It made Ava feel wretched._

_"You try and come back here, I'll shoot you myself," Grace warned. She grabbed her sniper rifle from her shoulders and unhinged it, lowering it slowly. The move won a few startled looks from the Resistance. Others, like Hudson, nodded their heads in agreement._

_"Don't think I won't. Comes a time, when you gotta draw the line in the sand."_

_"I know," she said miserably._

_"He's sick in the fucking head!" Deputy Hudson shouted, stretching the bruises on her mouth where John 'marked' her. "What are you playing at, trying to negotiate with him? He's made it VERY fucking clear he's not gonna negotiate."_

_"Doesn't mean I ain't gonna try."_

_She took a few more steps toward the door, Grace's shadow hounding her._

_Next, Mary May ran forward, crying in disbelief, "Wait, you aren't seriously going to talk to him again? After all he's done? I thought you were finished with him!"_

_Ava winced. Addie and Hurk looked at each other, something unspoken passing between mother and son. They turned to Ava with that same knowing look on their faces, Hurk coughing awkwardly into his meaty fist._

_He trundled over to her and whispered loudly, "Uh, Dep? Y'know that time, when I said you n' John should, uh, have 'relations' and stuff, to stop all the fightin? Yeah, I'm thinkin that was a no-go, buddy."_

_She twisted her lips in a sarcastic scowl, blushing. "Thanks, Hurk. That's...helpful."_

_He put a firm hand on her shoulder. "If my peer-pressurin made you do things you're uncomfortable with-"_

_"-it didn't."_

_Behind them, Grace raised her rifle to the ceiling, clearing her throat loudly._

_"Hurk! Get back over here," Addie snapped. "Ya don't bring up a lady's sex life, when she's about to make a life-alterin decision."_

_"Right. Sorry ma'am. Er, Mom. Just tryna find a reason the Dep's flipped her lid like a flapjack, all a sudden."_

_Speaking of pancakes, she was starving. But she might not ever share a meal with them again. Ava sighed._

_"Look. You heard the news on the radio, same as me," She raised her voice, speaking to them as one._   _"All that stuff about North Korea. The nukes. Russia. Now unless the Peggies are pullin an Orson Welles, it sounds like we're runnin out of time. And fast. So excuse me for sayin this here, but a lotta things are startin to look pointless."_

_She nodded to the their plans, the stash of guns and ammo. Things she helped them collect, things she was willing to abandon to try and talk sense into John. Her hand strayed to her pocket, feeling the outline of the letter. Really, the letter was what had thrown a wrench in the machine. She wondered if she should find something white to wear, go striding barefoot across the grass to John's compound, a new version of Faith, just for him._

_Would he welcome her into his arms then? Or was it another dirty trap?_

_"You don't walk out of here, not without consequences, Deputy!" Pastor Jerome cautioned, his voice echoing off the church walls. "Some things_ must _be solved by taking a side. If you walk out that door, you're leaving us forever. Understand that."_

_Ava nodded and faced the entrance. The pastor threw back his head and hissed his disappointment, murmuring a prayer. She reached the doorway and tugged on one of the handles, but the door wouldn't budge. Figured, even the church didn't want to let her go. She pulled harder, and wrenched the thing open, letting in silvery moonlight._

_"Dep! Forget that psycho!" Jess Black finally broke her composure, shouting hoarsely. "Come on!"_

_"Let her go," Grace growled to Jess. She waved dismissively at Ava. "Get out!"_

_"Rook!" Hudson called. "Don't!"_

_But Ava didn't stop. Couldn't stop. All the world was crashing down, and she had to make one last, vain, stupid attempt at saving everyone. She walked out the church doors, jogged down the steps, and turned the corner, vanishing into the summer night._

_~_

_Only, she would return, a few days later, standing in front of those same double doors. Arriving in record time, to find the Fall's End church bedecked in bliss flowers and white ribbons: the loathsome calling cards of the cult._

It looks like...like a wedding, or somethin _, she thought dismally. Her stomach hardened into a hot ball of lead._ He's got them in there. He went back on me, the coward. Just like Ramirez...

_She stormed up the stairs, one by one. She just wanted to get it over with. Whatever was gonna happen. A small part of her still hoped she could make John listen. He wasn't like the others, she told herself, each step filling her with more dread and doubt. He could be turned. He was still good. There was hope for them._

_She ripped open the door. **CRACK!** And was immediately smashed on the head with a rifle._

_When she came to, a tattoo instrument buzzing and a gun in her face, she knew she was wrong. About everything._

_At first, she hoped it was some elaborate roleplay of his. Kidnap her friends, have her prostrate herself before him, and boot everyone out so they could have shameless, crazed make-up sex on the church floor._

_I_ _t sure as hell seemed that way, at first._ _John ripped her shirt open with a flourish for his hostages, buttons flying off her flannel. He traced the needle over her WRATH insignia, outlining the faded letters, knowing how aroused it made her, even in her fear for her friends, a part of her was captured in his eyes, by the contrast of the sting of the needle and his firm grip on her naked shoulder. But he never said a word of recognition. He brushed her off, even when she tried to make a grab for his hand, twisting like a snake._

_"Hold still, Deputy. It's supposed to say 'WRATH', not 'RAT."_

_Ha, ha. She half-grinned and half-grimaced, laughing at how fucked up the situation was. She kept her mouth shut, the perfect mute, and pretended to squirm under his needle. Her acting eventually won a response. While hidden from view, under the guise of bracing her, his thumb caressed her nipple once, under her bra. Then his fingers encircled the base and twisted, eliciting a tiny moan of shock from her. A little reminder that he still cared for her, or perhaps a power play:_ Look what I can do to you, in front of everyone, you hopeless sinner...

_But her laughter was cut short. She watched as John sliced Nick's sin from his chest and spattered his forearms in the man's blood. He spoke as if he'd never met her before._

_"One little word, is all I want."_

_When they stood across from one another, Mary May and Jerome and Nick struggling against his cronies, it was as if they were strangers, even though he had marked her well before she set foot in that church._

_"Say it, Deputy."_

_He recognized her again with a flick of the eyes, a brief moment as they stared each other down, the Bible held before her. She said nothing. Her muteness said it all:_ if you won't come out in the open, neither will I.

 _The spectacle was short-lived. She pulled the gun from the Good Book, shot at him, but missed. John escaped. For the rest of her life, she would wonder if she, the woman whose father bought her a gun at the tender age of seven, missed John on purpose. She liked to think she didn't. But then again, she liked to think she did._   _It_ _didn't seem right, killing a man in a church._

_A road chase gave way to a mad dogfight in the skies. She'd remember a parachute, a dark figure in a long overcoat, drifting down into the woods. Her own plane crashed into the side of a mountain as she descended via her own parachute; she might have thrown up on someone's roof (whoops), she couldn't be certain, more dramatic things going on for her to care..._

_**Whump!** She landed on a shed, narrowly missing a beehive. Her chute crumpled to the ground. Her relief quickly turned to horror as she spied a body laying in a pool of blood: the homeowner of the roof she'd just 'christened', shot by John. _

_"Catch me if you can, Deputy!" he cried from the woods, laughing like a madman._

_She gnashed her teeth at the taunt and snatched up the dead man's gun. So began their chase through the woods, outside his bunker. That's where she would come to, back to reality. No candles, no witchcraft, no empty, crumbling walls and stacks of drugs. Just trees, sunlight, and the grass tearing under her feet. Emerald and gold light, spatters of shadow. Birds in the trees, falling silent at her frantic footfalls. She held her handgun in front of her, a heat-seeking missile, her vision filled with red and she could have sworn she heard '_ Only you'  _playing from a speaker in the trees, but that was absurd, there were no speakers out there..._

**_SNAP!_ **

_Crack of a twig, and she turned, but it was too late. John appeared in a black and gray blur, a flash of brightest blue, tackling her to the soft ground, knocking the air from her lungs. No lover's restraint in his limbs, only fury. They struggled, arm in arm, but he stunned her, and flipped her onto her back, pressing his full weight down on her chest. His coat falling around her sides._

_His hands found her throat._

_"Ugh!"_

_John pinned her, Ava growling and wriggling like a wild animal, clawing at his face, his shoulders, his back, the ink stretching across his knuckles. They lay like passionate lovers_ _, with the air slowly being crushed from her lungs, as John gritted his teeth and glared at her through slit eyes, both of them acutely, bitterly aware that, n_ _ot long ago, she had him stripped down, in a similar position, while he'd pressed his face into her neck, groaning as he released inside her, and she'd sworn to join him, join his family, crooning that promise (lie) over and over._

_"How...could you?" she choked out, words she'd restrained in the church until they were alone. "Nick...their baby...What did you tell him?"_

_"I have been TRYING to SAVE them and you, this ENTIRE time!" he growled, peeling his torso off hers. "That mute act of yours was cute, Deputy."  
_

_A twig snapped again. He sat up and looked around, his grip loosening around her throat, and she inhaled a shallow breath through her nose. She caught his scent: engine oil and cologne, pine trees and sweat._

_"You got a funny way...of savin people," she rasped. "What's your body count at?"_

_"You first." He shoved her back down by the shoulders."It's come to this! Because of your lies to yourself. To me!"_

_"Oh, don't start...with that shit...you fuckin turncoat."_ _She tried to knee him in the groin, but he laid his hands on her and slammed her down savagely, and she whimpered. Actually whimpered._

_John frowned and lowered his sable head, filling her with a tortuous ache, grasping the soft swell of her neck and whispering in her ear, "WHY didn't you just do like I asked? Why'd you have go and do this?"_

_His hand still around her throat, he dragged his lips across the damp skin beneath her ear, along her jaw. Taking in her scent, one last time. She wanted nothing more than for him to cover her in love bites and forget everything. But she can't forget Nick's blood, all over the floorboards._

_"Could ask...the same of you..." she sighed. Her_   _strength was leaving her limbs, and her vision darkened. He released her just as she came to the edge. She twisted onto her side, coughing, gasping. He climbed to his feet in one fluid motion. She still had a grip on her gun. Why hadn't he taken it from her? An oversight, or did he really think she was going to let him go?_

 _He spread his arms, tilting his head to the side, smiling. Actually smiling, the scoundrel._ _He spoke as if to a jury:_

_"Here we are, Deputy. Alone. My plane in ruins. Your church, stained with blood."_

_"Not...mine," she rasped, face pressed into the dirt. "I don't...believe."_

_"And that's why this all started," he accused. She thought he was going to attack her again, but he shoved his hands deep in his coat pockets. He had an assault rifle strapped to his back, but he hadn't seen fit to remove it. She couldn't bring herself to raise her gun. Not yet. Even though every survival instinct she had was screaming at her to shoot, shoot while he was vulnerable._

_"That's the only way this ends," he said, and she became aware of how tired he sounded._   _"You believe me, or you don't. Make your choice, Ava. Choose."_

 _Ava stirred at her own name from his lips._ _"I can't."_

_"Yes, you can."_

_John gritted his teeth and unstrapped the assault rifle. He lowered the barrel to face her, finger dancing across the trigger. Her index finger found hers, snailing down the side of her gun, where it came to rest._ _They locked eyes, her, from the ground, up at her lover, John, looking down, at the sinner in the dirt. He was covered in earth. Grass. Oil. Blood. Pain strained his face; she could see the struggle, the crow's feet crinkling the corners of his eyes, the half-snarl of indecision. Oh yes, she knew the struggle, all-too-well._

_Obey and execute. That was what was expected._

_"John. Please. Talk to me._ "

_She stared down the sight of her own gun. She didn't recognize the hand holding it, the tendons strained from its weight. She didn't even remember raising it from the grass. It came as a reflex, as easy to her as blinking or breathing, and she hated it._

_"No, Deputy. There comes a point where all the testimonial in the world won't do you any good."_

This isn't happening to me again, _she thought desperately._ Lawyer analogies? Gimme a fuckin break!

Shoulda learned to mind your business _, her father's gruff voice echoed in response, while she was staring up at John._ You shoulda walked away. Never _did_ learn to keep your hands outta the water.

_John's boots splashed water from a little stream as he took a step forward, raising his gun._

_Ava gulped and made a wounded sound, the pieces of her heart breaking, one by one._

_"I don't wanna kill you," she begged._

_"Likewise, Deputy."_

_His arms stiffened, and, with a final twitch of his shoulders, he took aim, and her heart jumped in her stomach and she loosed a raw-throated cry and pulled the trigger once again._

* * *

The vodka gets uncapped again. This time, she sips directly from it, remembering the taste of tequila and John's lips.

"Would you like to know, if your brother fired first?"

She asks Joseph like she's offering him more creamer for his coffee. But then she tries to pick up the box of cigarettes, with trembling hands, and it falls to the floor. Joseph's free hand clenches so tight, the nails bite into his flesh. She leaves the box alone.

"Tell me."

She laughs, shaking her head, nothing but affection in her saddened face. Unbidden tears spill down her cheeks. Joseph's eyes are dry as a desert. He has grieved enough for his little brother. There are bigger, more pressing matters at hand. On his knee, hidden by the table, the gun rests, pointed at her stomach.

She says at last, "He smiled. Dropped his gun, right as I fired. Gave me every reason to think he was about to kill me...only he didn't. He had a clear shot."

"Is that the truth?" A simple question, without much weight. Suitable last words, for his sworn enemy and temptress.

She pauses, and he inhales.

"I could _never_ kill him. Much as I wanted to. John knew that. He...spared me the burden."

She covers her face with her hands, leaning over the table, rocking back and forth gently. Joseph relaxes his right shoulder. His fingers loosen on the grip.

"Good."

She lowers her hands, her face clouded with confusion. "What?"

"I believe you."

Her brow furrows. She feels like she's past some kind of test, and brushes her dark, wavy hair out of her reddened eyes, rubbing her mouth with the back of her hand.

"I've told you. What do we do, now?" she asks him.

 _A fair question,_  he thinks. He answers by standing and cutting around the edge of the table, at her side in an instant. Startled, Ava rises, but before she can react, he wrests her into a tight, iron embrace, shoving his face against the side of her head, temple against temple. She whimpers once, but she can do nothing but lower her hands against his upper arms in a weak hug.

"You loved him?" he implores.

In a small, quiet voice, she says, "I did. I wanted to be with him. I told him such. I was...scared stiff."

"You miss him?"

She's weeping openly, her tears wetting his beard, his neck.

"Of course. Don't you?"

"Yes."

A flash of silver out of the corner of her eye, and the gun goes to his temple.

"I miss them all."

For a few long, drawn out seconds, Joseph can't speak, and Ava keeps still, cold sweat dripping down her spine. She can't give voice to the emptiness she feels. It scares her, how calm and at ease she is, facing death at his hands.

"Say the word," he murmurs, full of strange affection. His breath warms her ear. "I'll free us both. We can go see him, and everyone. We can end this charade. Together. But this does not end without you. Not without me. I will give us this gift, if you ask for it."

 ** _Gift?_** Her first instinct is to scream and push him away, but she stops herself, considering his offer. She's so tired, so drained. And he wouldn't say it, wouldn't hold the gun to their heads if he wasn't serious. In Joseph's own, twisted logic, this is a mercy he's prepared to grant them. And what else did they have to look forward to? A long, slow death by starvation over the winter, watching the dog succumb first, because they'll have to cut his food supply? Losing their minds, day by day, until they no longer recognize their skeletal, hollow faces in the mirror? Haunted in the shadows by their dead loved ones?

Or is there more? It seems a waste, not to find out. To not wait, see what comes, if they make it to spring.  _If there is a God, listenin up there...please, guide my hand._

Slowly, Ava reaches around him, laying delicate fingers on the metal barrel. It's cold as ice, contrasted against the heat of Joseph's fingers. Their foreheads touch, but she slides hers until the tips of their noses meet.

"You're not a monster," she reminds him softly. Her hand pushes the gun away. Gentle. Easy. Joseph is shaking all over. He doesn't want to do it. It's against everything he believes in. But it still takes precious seconds to get it away from their heads. He locks his arm, and she pushes harder. The gun comes to rest on the table. Her hand presses and rests on top of his own.

"Let go. You don't wanna do this. I don't want you to."

He does, closing his eyes, his entire body lightening. He's been shed of a great weight hanging on his shoulders.

"Do you hate me now?" she asks. She pulls back, lids lowered in an exhausted daze. She looks from the gun, to him, uncertain. His eyes are wide and electric behind his glasses, mortified by what he's almost done. 

"No," he breathes.

"Good."

She sighs, lowering her head to his chest. Her fingers clutch the back of his shirt. They tighten, balling the fabric in her fists. His broad shoulders tense. He grasps her chin, tilting her face up to his.

"You are the same as me. I could never hate you."

Before she can ponder the meaning of that, he cups her face and kisses her, halting any notion he might still pick up the gun. He'll never touch it again, with those thoughts in his head. But he needs her to choose, one final decision, and she does. She can grab the weapon off the table, it's right there, but the thought never crosses her mind. She makes her choice, pressing into his kiss. His thumbs rest at the corners of her mouth. She kisses down the length of each, his grip tightening as she does so. Below their waists, she feels him grow hard against her.

She's always admired his hands, every time he gestures or articulates with them. She takes a thumb between her lips and sucks. He groans, so much energy from such a tiny motion, and presses his forehead against hers, sliding more of it across her tongue, her grip around him shooting fireworks from his belly to his aching groin. She teases his thumb pad with her tongue, stroking it gently, circling it. For the first time she doesn't feel like his agitator, but something a little more...submissive. And she's starting to _like_ it.

He removes his thumb, the skin glistening with her saliva, a thin trail connecting them. He wipes this away, pulling on her bottom lip, while his eyes pierce through her.

"Can you forgive me?" he asks. One final permission, is all he needs. But he won't continue, until he gets it from her.

Her answer is immediate. Urgent. _Needful_.

"Yes."

Permission granted, he pulls her impossibly close, kissing her so rough their teeth click once. Throbbing, between her legs, involuntary and immediate. Heat and blood rush to their extremities, and the frigid metal room feels a million miles away. He twists their lips, biting her lower one, and Ava arches her spine, letting his affections fill her to the brim. He tangles his supple fingers into the back of her hair, with more grace than the night before, holding her in place while he ravages her mouth and chin--not with sloppy, quick movements. Slow. Passionate. Like one of his animated sermons, he lets the fire build, rising and rising...

Deep. Everything he does is deep. Each time she wants to touch another part of him, she can't. They could spend all day like this, and it confounds her. With John, things had been fast, almost desperate as he unleashed his repressed energies on her. Joseph is repressed, too, but he's also shown her that he's the epitome of patience.

It's not his patience she desires right now, though. Her hand strays down, groping hard lead in his jeans, and he looses a guttural moan into her mouth. It's been so long since anyone's touched him like this, and it doesn't go unnoticed. But whether she's aware she's just woken something carnal inside him...

"So _serious_ ," she smirks, squeezing him again, and more blood rushes to his dick, causing it to twitch. _Oh, she's aware._

His hands press the sides of her face. He's practically stabbing her between the legs.

"You know what you've done? You know what this means, don't you?"

She giggles coquettishly. "No. Tell me, Father."

She weaves her arms around his strong neck, pressing her breasts against his chest. He kisses from her mouth to her jaw, nipping down her exposed throat. She takes his other hand and places it on her breast, over her shirt. He gropes it eagerly at first, pushing it up, almost out of her bra, and she swoons. His fingers slip past the collar and brush against the livewire-tip of a nipple, lighting her nerves up like a Christmas tree.

He stops himself, fingers teasing her, making her a wilting mess against him.

"It means we are one now," he says.

"One?"

"One. Body and soul. And you will _submit_."

On 'submit', his grip on her breast tightens, her nipple grazing his palm. She gasps and opens her eyes, anger mixing with arousal in a horrible, delectable swirl in her belly. He removes it, and holds up his other hand, the metal cross, unwinding it from its tether and swaying in front of her like a hypnotist's charm: the symbol of his faith, his _restraint._  He places it on the table and leaves it behind. He turns, and looks _only_ at her, with such blue-green ferocity, her heart skips. 

His fingers slide and rasp, ever-so-slowly, off the wooden table edge. Ava can't breathe again, but only from anticipation. He's never looked at her like this before, like he could rip all her clothes off and take her right there, on the floor. She suddenly feels very young, and very stupid. He is almost twice her age, after all. Maybe, she's even a little afraid.  _What the hell?_

"Come here."

He grabs her, hoisting her up, seizing a generous handful of her ass. She yelps in surprise, a small trill that he stores away with pleasure. His hands all-too happily grasp her flesh, and when her crotch rubs below his waist as he seats her on him, he sighs in his pleasure. Pinned, she litters his neck and shoulders with kisses and love-bites, as he carries her to the couch. He eases her down onto her back, a move she associates with high school, amateur make-out sessions in the basements of old boyfriends. But for some reason, with him, it's something novel, something new. As if for the first time.

 _What the hell is he doing to me?_ Maybe it's because it's been so long, but she's already slick between the legs, getting wetter by the second in her helpless _want_. The sickening, submissive feeling hits her full force, and she spreads her legs to make room for his incessant pushing.

"I like you, like this," he purrs. "This new side of you, Ava."

She looks up, barely breathing, as he positions himself on top. They return to their fevered kissing, this time with her caged between him and the cushions. Every time she tries to rise and meet him, he manhandles her back down into the sofa, never too rough, but enough to get the point across: she's not going anywhere, without his permission. He takes her head in his hands, and grips her lips with his own, forcing her to be still.

With a whimper she leans back, letting him press into her, the _surrender_ of it making her head spin. Skin. They need skin. At some point he moves to unbutton her jeans, and she helps him peel them off. She claws at his shirt, yanking it up and over his head, and runs her hands along his shoulders, his chest, fingers dancing over the scars, the lines of ink.

Sloth. Lust. Greed. A tapestry of lovely sins.  _Wrath._

He takes her wrists in his warm, strong hands. His mouth twitches, almost smiling, but the incessant, borderline painful ache of his arousal overrides any humor.  

"You had me worried, for a second," she laughs. Such meek words, for what almost transpired at the table.

He lets go, concerned he's being too forceful. She lays her palms flat against his firm chest, his heart thrumming beneath her fingertips, so full of life and warmth. She's so grateful right now for those two things, and her own heart pulses. He watches the skin above her jugular twitch.

"You are safe," he assures her. The fear has already left her body, like an evil spirit. Destruction is the last thing on both their minds. Quite the opposite, actually.

She smiles, reaching up to kiss him, and rubs her pelvis against him. He's rock solid between her legs. Even through the fabric, she can feel how _badly_ he wants her. She grinds the thin layer of her underwear against the rod in his jeans, savoring the nudge and pressure against her clit.

"You are life itself," he murmurs, into her hair. Those words send a chill throughout her body.  _What does he mean,_  'life' _? We can't have a baby in this place. We can't. God, help me but I wanna-_

"Allow me to make it up to you. Please..."

Weighted hands on her knees, his fingers rubbing the soft skin. He spreads her legs, moving back on the couch to make room. At such a vulnerable opening of herself, she can't help but blush, her abdomen tightening. He puts one leg on the floor, to steady himself, and lowers down between, kissing her naked thigh, the skin quivering at the scratch of his beard.

"I need you," she whines. While she's fantasized before about what his mouth might feel like, the gentle press of his nose just above her mound while his tongue violates and ravishes her, there are stronger impulses at work. Itches that must be scratched. Foreplay be damned. Foreplay is a fucking  _joke_ compared to what she wants him to do to her...

"I know," he mutters, low and lusty. He thinks he does. His fingers hook into her panties and begin to peel them down. The dig of her nails into his back stops him. She pulls him upwards, the sweet temptation of her sex replaced with her tantalizing lips and tongue. 

"You don't want-" he starts to ask, but she silences him with another rough, clumsy kiss, and he groans. His hands seek the smooth, ample swells of her thighs, squeezing, his mind spinning from the fire torching his veins. If he's not between them and inside her in five seconds he's going to boil over.

"Now." She makes it clear. "Now, please, now."

She guides his hand between her legs, letting him feel how soaked she is. He doesn't need to be told twice, but she says it again: "I need you inside, Joseph." 

He straightens up, and she marvels at his chest and chiseled abs, the downright obscene 'Lust' scar that must have driven so many women in the cult wild...so many countless hours exposed to his shirtless form, but she's seeing him in a _whole_ new light now, God help her. His belt buckle comes off, the zipper goes down. She watches his hands the entire time, the way they deftly undo everything. The jeans sag, but he doesn't even bother removing them. His erection springs out in the open, brushing against her thigh, but she doesn't bother looking, other than a cursory glance. He's longer than John, and _wider,_ too. She bites her lip. She's already seen him naked, but this is new, virgin territory for her.

"Careful of that greed," he warns, rubbing her thigh. His own pupils are blown out with Lust. He takes his aviators and sets them aside.

"Sorry," she offers, the broad smile anything but apologetic. She cocks one of her knees to the side, offering herself up to him. She's still covered by her panties, but the telling indent in the cloth, the twin swells of her outline get his imagination running wild. He drinks in the view with less-than-holy intentions.

She hooks a leg around his lower back. He yanks her panties aside. He starts at her clit, pressing the wide head of his cock into it, nudging in little circles that get her wriggling and panting beneath him, before gliding along her smooth, warm folds. He presses it against her entrance, and she isn't kidding, she's nothing short of drenched.

Their eyes meet. A terrible wave, a surge of what she suspects and what he _knows_ is love, crashes into them. At her wetness, the color in her cheeks, her swollen pupils and fluttering chest, he needs no further encouragement, no more signs she's ready for him. He glides into her, without hesitation. Their hips connect, and she pulls the rest of him close with a gasp. His cock fills her completely, no room for want, and she goes almost numb with ecstasy. 

"God, yes," she croons. "Oh, my God..."

At this spiritual confession, he thrusts slow and measured, opening her up slowly. Her dripping muscles clamp down and hug him, a sensation he'd all but forgotten, but he is a _slave_ to Lust, always has been, and she  _demands_ he continue. Ava tilts her hips up, making more room for him. She needs to have all of him inside, so welcoming, so _greedy_ for him, and only him. Consumed, he buries his face into her neck, his breaths heavy with his labored thrusts. He uses his leverage from his boot on the floor to gain more traction, and the couch squeaks and skirts a few inches into the wall.

Adrift in a sea of heat, sweat, and skin, Ava rocks with his hips, not wanting to miss an inch of what he's giving her, keeping him inside at all costs. She does it with such enthusiasm, such passion, something inside him tightens dangerously, and if he lets go now, he'll finish too soon, _far_ too soon, he's got to keep this going for as long as both of them can stand...

Joseph halts suddenly with a grunt, Ava panting beneath him like a wild animal, her knees pinning him in place. The sheer pressure of his cock has her cunt pulsing, craving for more. For a few seconds, neither of them moves, each savoring this connection to the other, this warm, unyielding bond of flesh that joins them, the feeling of total rightness, so irresistibly  _whole_ _._  They must _never_ be apart. He thought so, when she left the shelter for the first, time; he'd said so, when he held the gun to her head, and he  _knows_ so, as he drives an intimate piece of himself inside her.

He doesn't stop for long, though. Ava goads him with little, upward thrusts of her own, whispering so gentle, she's gone stupid and demure: "More. Please, more."

He can't help himself, speeding up again, all but impaling her to the couch and crushing down on her with his chest, his arms. His dick plunges in and out of her. He never completely removes it, teasing her with his near-absence before sliding so sweet and deep again, letting it fill her over and over, heating and tugging her clit from the sheer friction. She rakes her nails across his back, legs locked around him. Her hands slither down his spine and squeeze his buttocks as they rise and fall, pressing him somehow impossibly _deeper,_ and he hits something for the umpteenth time, so sensitive and full to burst, her empty bladder contracts by proxy...

With a startled cry, she starts to pitch and cum, her outside stretched along with her inside from his insistent efforts. Her climax calls to him, pushes him to the edge, and he grits his teeth as the home stretch closes in, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple.

"You feel so fucking  _good_ ," she wails up at him, despite herself. "Fuck! Joseph-"

"So...do...you." He can barely get the words out, his orgasm crashing down. 'My love', he wants to say, but he isn't sure if it's the right time, isn't sure if he _needs_ to. He throws back his head and groans, pumping her a final few times, with all his length. They raise their heads simultaneously, Ava moaning between shallow breaths, Joseph crying out repeatedly from his release. Their abdomens slam and compress all that Lust, that ink and muscle against her bellybutton, and she feels his hot, hot love burst inside her, swirling, warm, abundant.

So abundant, years and years of repressed desire all spilling out of him, gifting it to her, and a hidden part of her feels like she's received some sort of cherished thing. When he unsheathes himself, his seed gushes all over the cushions. Neither of them pays it much mind. They weave, sweating and utterly spent, into each other's arms, Joseph catches his breath. His entire life, he's done all the talking, but now it seems he can't find the words, or air, to speak.

Ava's content to hold his head against her breast, stroking his hair. She can't help but laugh a little. They'd gone so fast, she hadn't even bothered removing her shirt. And that was fine.

They have time.

~

"Joseph," she murmurs in the dark of his bedroom, hours and multiple sessions later. Longer than the first, which felt more like an introduction to one another. A carnal handshake. Now, they are fast friends, maybe even soulmates in their lovemaking. There are papers, mixed in with the sheets. At some point, he had her pinned up against the wall, their bodies rising and falling vertically as one. He's had her all over his room--not a surface untouched, it seems. But they have spent the longest amount of time in his bed, Joseph treating her luscious walls to every inch of him, his fingers, his tongue...

He stirs, and she knows he's listening.

"About earlier..." she says.

His arms envelop her in response. He's preparing his answer carefully. They no longer need walk on eggshells around one another, but he owes her his honesty now. She nestles against him, trusting and calm.

A hand strokes her hair. She's warm, radiating bliss below her navel, tired and beyond satisfied. His other hand glides across her flat belly, over her womb. It astounds her how big it feels, against her skin. She can guess what he's thinking about: it's a tiny seed of a thought with her, too. Perhaps planted the moment she decided to push the gun away.

"I had to be sure you weren't lying, about John," he answers. "After hearing all of it, seeing your face...there could be no doubt."

"So, you were protectin yourself?"

"Yes. I can't ask you enough times to forgive me." He swallows a lump in his throat, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I'm...ashamed."

"Don't be. I understand. I think, maybe I had my own doubts." She smirks, reaching to her stomach. She places her hand over his, intertwining their fingers. "I don't have them anymore."

A pause.

"You will _never_ need to fear me again. I promise."

"Hmph." She rolls over, into his chest. He rests his chin on her head. The sheets are tangled at their feet.

"You are my other half," he insists. "To harm you would be to harm myself."

"You've done enough of that," she says quietly. " We both have. And Joseph?"

"Yes?"

"You need to know. I'm _never_ gonna be your Faith. I can't be, like one of your followers. I don't believe. Not in God, or in heaven, or prophesies. That's just who I am. You have to accept that."

He pauses again, unwilling to respond. Her hand caresses the side of his face, his beard, cupping him lovingly. Never had he imagined her touching him like this, but now that she is, it feels as if it was meant to be. He accepts that, with every fiber of his being.

She lifts her head, finding his lips in the dark, placing a slow, tender kiss there that almost makes him hard again. Her lips are sore, and have purple marks, along with her nipples. They scarred each other, in the best way possible.

"I think...I can believe in somethin else," she whispers, coiling against him. Their hands stroke each other, confirmation of each other's presence, mapping their bodies in the dark.

"Like what?" he asks. At her touch, he _does_  harden once again. He lifts her leg and slides inside from behind, gentler than before.

"I believe in you. In us," she gasps, arching into him. She has no energy left to give, can only place one hand behind his head and help angle him into her.

It's all he needs to hear. With a lazy re-positioning and a few thrusts, he's loving her again. When they finish, he basks in the wake, pulling her close. His fingers trace along her arm, down the curvature of her waist, over and over, raising goosebumps. She shivers, rapturous.

"You asked me once, how the book ends. What comes after."

"I did. You never gave me an answer."

He settles back into the mattress and tugs the blanket over them. She thinks back to the first time she saw him, standing in the church, a total stranger: those same eyes that captivated her, winning her stare, out of all the other sets of eyes on her. He found her, and he's never let her go. 

"It was always you," he sighs.


	11. After the Thaw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MUCH lighter ending chapter. Grab your lint roller cuz the fluff train is incoming lol.
> 
> I just had to post the song lyrics that inspired my character. If you get a chance, check out the music video. It is nothing short of W-E-I-R-D but a fucking masterpiece. I miss the 90s...

It's you that I adore  
You'll always be my whore  
You'll be the mother to my child  
And a child to my heart  
We must never be apart  
We must never be apart

Lovely girl you're the beauty in my world  
Without you there aren't reasons left to find

And I'll pull your crooked teeth  
You'll be perfect just like me  
You'll be a lover in my bed  
And a gun to my head  
We must never be apart  
We must never be apart

In you I see dirty  
In you I count stars  
In you I feel so pretty  
In you I taste god  
In you I feel so hungry  
In you I crash cars  
We must never be apart

Drinking mercury  
To the mystery of all that you should ever seek to find  
Lovely girl you're the murder in my world  
Dressing coffins for the souls I've left behind  
In time

We must never be apart  
And you'll always be my whore  
'Cause you're the one that I adore  
And I'll pull your crooked teeth  
You'll be perfect just like me

In you I feel so dirty in you I crash cars  
In you I feel so pretty in you I taste god

We must never be apart

-"Ava Adore", The Smashing Pumpkins

* * *

 "Tell it to me, again."

"Tell you what?"

"The story. Of how you came back from the dead."

Ava pauses when the driver of their truck, a short-haired, slightly older Jess Black, looks in the rear view mirror, at the curious little boy in the back seat. A pair of aquamarine eyes, under the second-most expressive, black eyebrows the huntress has ever seen, stare back at her.

"People don't come back from the dead, kid," Jess responds. Her hands grip the steering wheel, her sharp eyes focusing on the winding, dusty mountain road.

Ava turns in her seat. "You know what a metaphor is?"

"Is it like something in a story?"

"A part of a story. A way of tellin it. That's sorta like a lie or a fib, but not. It makes it easier to tell big ideas."

The boy thinks on it, and she can practically hear the gears in his head spinning, over the roar of the truck's engine.

"Like Noah's Ark?" he finally guesses. "The rainbow?"

Jess Black whistles, and he knows he's right.

"Yours is smart. Bookish, like his father," Jess observes. "Not like mine. Takes after his daddy. Would rather go 'round spoutin off about the monkey king and aliens."

Ava smirks. "Yeah, but no one can aim like yours can. And he can lift a potato gun already. Kid could hit a tin can off the roof of the Empire State. If it's still standin."

Jess grunts to show how much she cares for forgotten cities, or her son taking after his father's habits. They were perhaps the second-most unlikely couple in Montana.

"Mooooom," the blue-eyed boy whines, bored. The two-hour drive back to Hope County isn't a fun one. It had been, at first, when he was little, but he's getting older now, and dropping childish interests for new ones. Like how he's recently noticed his mother and father don't live in the same compound, unlike the other 'bunker babies', as Aunt Addie is fond of calling them: the offspring of Hope County residents, traveling survivors, and a few ex-Eden's Gate members making up their guarded community to the northeast.

"I'll tell you," Ava says finally, her ponytail bobbing to and fro, along with the bald eagle hanging from the mirror. "But you can't interrupt. Just listen, okay?"

They must watch the roads for raiding parties, and the fewer questions she has to answer, the less distracted she'll be. Also, she doesn't like being interrupted, and the boy knows his mother has a temper. She even had a reminder tattooed into her chest because someone didn't like it, once.

"Okay," he agrees happily, rearranging himself in the back seat. He cracks a window, his shaggy black hair whipping in the breeze. From the seat next to him, an older, grayer Boomer lolls his tongue out, slobbering, and climbs across the boy, sticking his snoot out the window and stepping on his stomach.

"Ouch! Come on, mutt." The boy shoves the dog off him, his wrath lending him strength. "Also, Mom, can you skip to the part where you come out? That's my favorite!" 

" _Fine._ Once upon a time," Ava starts, doing her best to hide her gusto from a bored Jess. She never was one for storytelling, but that was before the world ended and a certain someone, someone she's missing terribly right now, forced her to tell the longest stories of her life. Now, she kind of enjoys it. She adds new details each time, distorting the crazy reality that had once been her dark and strange world.

"There lived a lady and a man, in an underground bunker, much smaller and unhappier than the one we live in now. The man and the lady _hated_ each other, at first..."

* * *

_They made it to spring, just in time, carrying each other through the worst of it, like shipmates stranded at sea._

_Joseph helped her recover when they had to release Boomer into the wild, unable to feed him any longer. They had to look after themselves, and there was still no game, no food to scavenge, and the frequent snowstorms made traveling difficult if not impossible. Joseph had to shoot at the dog, to get him to run, but eventually Boomer fled, his salt-and-pepper coat disappearing into the woods._

_It absolutely wrecked her. The only thing keeping her from curling up in a bed and starving herself was what she discovered, the following day, after peeing on a stick she'd found in the infirmary: she was pregnant._

_She didn't wait to tell him. Joseph was moonstruck, but not surprised._

_"It was only a matter of time," he told her, that night in bed, his book open in his lap. Not referring to all their physical activities or the inevitability of such. He'd meant that it was_ destined _to happen._

_"Things are gonna get harder," she said, after their initial elation settled. "A lot harder."_

_"But ours will be an autumn child," he proclaimed in confidence, over his writings, a pen held in his right hand. "They won't know anything of the cold, Ava. Not for the first month or so. We will have time to prepare."_

_She'd smiled at his optimism. Their time underground, however, was rapidly running out. Joseph opened up and told her more about his life, stories from before the cult, rare, cherished memories of his brothers. Much of him remained a mystery, with him preferring to keep his past in the past. Ava understood; no need to reopen old wounds. The spring thaw came, and the shelter was out of food and damn near out of fuel and clean water. Things were breaking down. Their foundation was crumbling all around them, but their bond with one another never frayed. Ava's sole concern became that of the baby's welfare. Perhaps it was her mother's instinct that drove her outside one day, with the snow melting on the trees, the dripping of icicles the only sound._

_She was looking for squirrels, a hunting rifle in her hands. They had seen a few, a few days ago. When she heard boots crunching in the snow, she'd assumed they were Joseph's. They were the only two people alive in these parts, after all. Soon to be three, she reminded herself, patting her stomach when-_

_"Freeze!" a familiar, husky voice bellowed, the barrel of a gun pressing against the back of her head. Then: "Oh my fucking God...Deputy?"_

_A dog barked and raced over to her. Boomer jumped up and licked her frigid cheeks, and Ava almost died on the spot from the shock._

_Ironically, it was Grace that drove her from the Resistance, so many months ago, and now it was Grace (with help from Boomer) who'd found Ava again. Also ironic that John and the Seeds were the ones who usually kidnapped her, but now Grace was snatching her rifle and dragging her toward the group of people in snow jackets and boots, their faces obscured by masks._

_"I've got her!"_

_Having flashbacks of the cryptids, and so unused to other people, Ava screamed and ran. When Grace caught up with her and seized her from behind, clamping on her stomach, she moaned, "Don't! The baby!"_

" _Baby?!" someone who sounded oddly like Sharky hollered, from behind his ski mask. He took a second to put two-and-two together. "Nobody lays a hand on a woman like that, and gets away with it! I'll kick that greasy, scumbag preacher's ass!"_

_Distressed, confused, Ava didn't recognize them at first. She pointed toward the people brandishing their guns and stalking towards the hatch door. "Stop! Leave us alone."_

_"Deputy," Grace shouted, spinning her around. "It's okay. You're safe. You're comin with us."_

_Her eyes gradually widened, seeing everyone for the first time. Sharky. Jess Black. Grace. Hurk. A few others, people she didn't recognize. All armed and fed and clean. Much larger than her, too, with her clothes hanging off her skinny frame._

_She threw her arms around Grace, sobbing big, un-policewoman-like sobs._ Damn these hormones.

_"I thought we were the only ones left!" she gasped._

_"Jesus. They must've been down there since the Fireworks," Sharky remarked. Ava blinked at him, not understanding. "Oh, that's what I call it, 'Fireworks'. The apocalypse is a mouthful, dontcha think? Plus, it ain't much of a reckoning if we're all still here."_

_"Not everyone," Ava reminded him. She pointed towards the graves. "Some didn't make it."_

_"You got some explainin to do," Jess Black spoke up. Either she had gotten fat, or she had found someone to keep her warm throughout the winter as well. "Come with us."_

_"If you want to live," Sharky added, using his best_ Terminator _accent._

_Dizzy, overjoyed to see them all again, she went with them willingly for the most part, glancing at their tracks often. They wouldn't harm her, Grace promised, but she wasn't allowed to go back to the shelter. They led her away while Joseph was still sleeping, but she tied her scarf to a nearby tree. Then she tied a shoelace. A sock. She gouged arrows into trees and broke branches. She left as much as she could for him, but eventually they climbed into trucks and drove for hours, and her heart was equal parts dread and happiness..._

_While gaining back all the weight she lost, eating enough food and drink to leave her in a coma, she would learn that the Resistance, shortly after the bombs dropped, reunited somewhere in the Henbane region, in some underground caves. They branched out,a nd found another shelter, outside of the county, another big military silo, this one untouched by the bombs. It was too far from Hope County to have attracted the attention of Eden's Gate, but some other folks had found it: military people who ran a strict operation. No outsiders._

_But they knew about the Whitetails, and had respect for them, and so Tammi and Wheaty and the others worked a truce. They took in more, over the following months, including Peggies._

_Now, they were a flourishing compound. The green was returning to the trees, slowly but surely. Ava would see her first blossoms, only a few days before she felt her son kick for the first time. That kick would serve as a reminder: his father was still missing. Dutch's shelter was empty when she had a search party sent out for Joseph. What he must have thought of her, she couldn't say._

_She only knew she must see him again. And heaven help the poor soul that got in her way. And so when an ex-Peggie arrived, informing them that Eden's Gate was alive and well, back in Hope County, she'd swiped the keys to a truck and took off without a second thought..._

* * *

 "And you see, even though she thought they had died and were living as ghosts," Ava finishes. "She realized she was alive when her son started kickin, and the trees were in bloom. So she drove off into the sunset, in search of his father. The End."

"And she found him!" the boy laughs. "I know because he's MY father!"

"You're a shit storyteller," Jess Black grunts to her. She has no love for Joseph Seed or the newer, less-violent Eden's Gate. The truce still stands to this day: Resistance and Eden's Gate were never to harm one another. They have common enemies to fight, nowadays: starvation, supplies. Raiders. Ava and her son, Julian, played a big part in that truce, and Jess has her doubts it will stand the test of time. Though, she had to respect the Pegs, for protecting their people from the roving bands of marauders, coming out of the west in waves. Rumor has it there are things worse than raiders, amassing an army somewhere in the desert, near old Las Vegas, which survived the attacks.

Eden's Gate's new residence is a series of prepper shelters, most of them abandoned when the owners' supplies ran out. Yet somehow Joseph managed to put down roots, growing his flock to never-before-seen numbers. They recently expanded to the Whitetails, and the trees here have the most leaves on them that Ava's ever seen.

She points them out to Julian.

"Look, Jay," she says, using his pet name. "You ever seen so much?"

"What's it called, Mom?"

"What do you mean?"

"The color," he clarifies, brightly.

"It's green," she explains, her face falling, but he doesn't see.

" _That's_ green?!" Then, completely unrestrained, he cries: "Holy SHIT!"

Ava laughs, then cringes. "Don't let your father catch you swearin like that."

"Wouldn't want that, would we?" Jess chuckles, wiping a tear from her eye. Ava grins back at her son, unable to resist his smile.

They reach their destination an hour later, as the sun is setting. Jess drops them off at an undisclosed location in the woods, a cabin with a Peggie guard posted. Ava takes her son by the hand and leads him past the two sentries facing them. Jess watches mother and son go, leaning out the window, scowling at the Peggies from afar. They wave to her, but she doesn't respond, driving off to join other Resistance on a hunting expedition. She would not return for two days.

"Mother," the two guards greet Ava, bowing their heads.

"How many times have I told you not to call me that?" She sighs, nodding to acknowledge them. "Makes me feel old."

"Mom," Jay speaks up, once they're out of earshot of the men and his Aunt Jess. "Do you love Dad?"

She stops. "Why do you ask?"

He digs a toe in the dirt, his little hand clasped in her own.

"You never say it. The other kids' parents say it all the time. Uncle Hurk says it to Aunt Jess. She pretends she doesn't like it, but she does. Hurk Jr. told me so."

Ava takes a deep breath, the answer not coming easily to her. The cabin grows on the horizon, and soon they're almost to the door. A figure opens it, one she can't see in the glare of the red, setting sun.

"I'll tell you later," she says. "Deal?"

"Deal."

The door opens all the way, and Joseph steps out. There's a little gray to his hair, some crow's feet as he skirts fifty years of age, but he's every bit as healthy and handsome as they day she arrested him in the church.

He embraces his small family, kneeling to reach his son, wrapping his arms around Ava's legs.

"Any trouble on the drive?" He rises to his feet, and kisses her for a long time, on the lips. Jay looks away, blushing.

"Nope. Roads were clear," she says finally.

"Thank God for that."

He kisses her again, on the cheek. He reaches down and lifts Jay clean off the ground. "You're heavier than last time."

"You say that every time, Dad!"

Joseph smiles. It's still a rare thing, but his son never fails to bring one out of him. She can't help but feel a tinge of envy.

"I mean it every time. Come inside. Let's get some dinner."

She locks the door behind them, and both she and Joseph glance out the windows at the guards, before drawing the blinds. Night falls. No stars or moon, the same as always, but they have a fire and candles to light the cabin. They share a meal together (including fresh game, courtesy of Jess), as they have at least once a month, for nearly six years. Julian tells his father everything about his life, and, as always, he asks questions about Eden's Gate, under the protective gaze of his mother.

"When will I get to come meet your people?" he asks, looking from right to left at the table. Mom to Dad. "Are there kids there?"

"No kids," he says. "It's a rule of ours. It's always been that way."

Ava coughs. "For the most part."

Joseph shoots her a look, his eyebrow raised.  _Really?_

"When will I get to meet them all, though?"

"When you're old enough to decide," Ava answers. "Now eat the rest of your peas."

Jay shovels the unpleasant, mushy vegetable into his mouth. He looks to his father for confirmation, their eyes identical.

"What your mother said," Joseph says quietly. He stares at the candle flame, flickering on the table, and passes a hand over it without so much as a flinch, to the amusement of his son.

"One day, when you're ready. And don't bring the matter up again, please. This is the hundredth time you've asked."

"It's not his fault for askin questions," Ava whispers later, after they've put Jay to bed. She washes the dishes with water from a barrel, and Joseph helps her dry them.

She pauses over a plate, sniveling. She wipes her eyes on her sleeve and stares out the darkened window, barely making out the lantern lights of the guards.

"Are you all right?" Joseph asks, walking up behind her. He wraps his arms around her midsection, and she lowers her hand to her belly.

"Just hormones," she sighs. "They're startin up again. They'll stop after the second trimester. Or they did, last time. It's been a few years."

She had sworn to him she wasn't using birth control, but the truth was, she'd used a stash of pills for years, when the Resistance discovered them in a pharmacy cache. They hadn't run out of them, though. One day, watching their small group of children play in the rec yard, she decided to stop taking them. They've known for a month or two now, but haven't told anyone yet, with her stepping back in her duties as a guard, raising some suspicions among the compound women. Mostly, she just helps out where she can, her and Grace and a few others finally on speaking terms with one another.

She's saving the talk about his first sibling for when their son really needs to hear it. Sometimes, especially in uncertain days like these, it's better to wait to tell the good news. And to have a baby at all, sometimes it's better to wait, and make sure their existence is secure. He knows this, and he has forgiven her for any 'untruths' about why she hasn't conceived years before. Ultimately, he has zero say in the matter, and that's never been a debate between them.

"What set you off?" he asks. He hates to see her cry, always taking him back down underground, to darker times.

"Julian," she says their son's full name, and turns around. "He didn't know what leaves looked like, until today. It makes me wonder, what kind of world are we bringin these kids into?"

He grasps her chin, tilting her face up to his. "A better one."

She dries her hands on her apron, and embraces him.

"Is it?"

"Some things are better."

She thinks on the truce, on their prospering communities, and agrees with him. He kisses the downy hairs on her neck, sending a pleasant chill down her spine.

"I'm thinkin if this one's a boy, I'd like to name him Jacob," she snorts. "Keep the 'J' theme goin strong."

He stifles a chuckle, so as not to wake their son, and takes her by the hand.

"Come with me. The dishes can wait. I can't, any longer."

He leads her away, to their bedroom.

~

They don't have much time. Julian is a night-owl and wakes frequently, and is prone to wandering around, getting into things. He has his mother's stubborn spirit and his father's curiosity.

From their queen-sized bed with the soft, deer-hide comforter, Ava rips off her boots, and Joseph fumbles with his belt buckle, there in the low light of the fireplace. The logs crackle and block some of the noise, but the cabin--the site of their feverish, hasty reunions for the past six years--is pleasantly soundproof. 

Joseph checks the door, whispering, "Is everything else okay? No sickness? No radiation signs?" 

"Nobody has any, on our side," she reports, removing her shirt. He turns around, stopping at the sight of her swollen breasts, spilling out of her bra. She smiles at him, her face warmed by the firelight.

"We are fine, too. No radiation sickness. It is as God intended."

"...You know that's a turnoff for me, right?"

Joseph sighs. "I only mean we should be grateful, every day, for our protection from the fallout."

"I am. Every time I look at our son."

Ava nods, gazing at the rippling, orange flames in the fireplace, remembering her tiny fire in the ranger station, the blisters on the men she'd encountered. Not everybody was spared. Hope County, it seemed, was on a ley line.

"Some call it a miracle," she muses, drawing her knees up to her chest. "I dunno _what_ to call it. By all means, the human race should be a pile of melted DNA by now."

While Joseph finishes undressing, she reaches over, into her bag, and pulls out something metal and shiny. Joseph steps out of his jeans and joins her on the bed. He starts kissing her, as sprung as a springtime buck and rearing to go. His lips descend, between her breasts, making a line for the space below her navel, stopping at her taut, smooth belly. She isn't showing yet, but he presses his face against it anyway, worshiping around her navel in a circle, his arms wrapped around her lower back.

He stays there for a long time, nuzzling her again and again, kissing her endlessly, his efforts getting louder. Her nerve endings spark to life. An overwhelming wave of _something_ hits her, and she places a hand on the crown of his head.

"Here," she says.

He looks up, from his spot below her. She's holding a pair of metal handcuffs in front of his face. She grins, and sits back into the pillows, letting him catch a glimpse of the forbidden valley between her legs, before folding them ladylike against her.

The cuffs dangle suggestively from her fingers, reflecting fiery light.

"Where did you find that relic? And...why?"

Slyly, she says, "Figured I'd let you get me back, for that time I arrested you."

She stretches her body out, tempting him, and puts her hands by the bed frame, eyeing him from the tops of her breasts. "Unless you'd rather I arrest  _you_ again."

He shakes his head, eyes roving over her body. The scar on his abs tingles like a sixth sense, or a summons. He crawls across her, and the cuffs click shut, locking her wrists into place above her head.

"I already told you, twice. God won't let you take me."

He eases a hand between her legs, and his fingers find her center with ease, stroking her. She contorts her body against him with a soft moan, and he slips a finger inside, removes it, and licks her off him like honey. He's never tired of that taste.

He purrs into Ava's ear, exciting a shudder from her, "This time, my dear wife, and forever more, I will."

~

"I have an answer for you," Ava announces happily, as they climb into the big, white pickup. Jess Black is helping some of Joseph's men unload a few deer she's shot, not saying a word to them as she does so. She does, however, notice the color in Ava's cheeks, the way she holds her midsection when she thinks no one's looking. It annoys the shit out of her. It almost makes her wanna find Hurk, grab a six pack, and lay him down unprotected in a lean-to somewhere, far from her mother-in-law's nosy (disturbing) 'coaching'.

The huntress has come to take them home on the third night. It's safer to travel by darkness. They have already said their goodbyes, Joseph holding onto them each for a long, long time, before finally letting them go. He even made a rare joke, something about finding a trail of mom's 'collectibles' if he needs to locate them.

"What answer?" Jay asks his mother, groggy, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"You asked me something," Ava chides. "Remember?"

The boy stirs a little. "Oh, right!"

As Jess Black climbs into the truck, she makes them roll up the windows and lock their doors. Ava raises a hand to Joseph, standing in the light of the doorway. He raises his in return, waiting for them leave, arms folded against his chest.

_He never stopped looking for her. He'd followed the articles of clothing, the clues she left behind and the footprints, hitching a ride with some other survivors, til they arrived just outside the compound. From his hiding place, once he saw she was safe, he returned to Hope County, on a rumor that his scattered flock were in need of their shepherd. And he waited, and he prayed, and, sure enough, she returned to him. He'd held her in his arms at last, and placed his hand upon her stomach, feeling his son move for the first time, nothing but pure adoration in his eyes for her..._

"The answer is yes," she tells him. Her hand strays to her stomach. She wears no ring, but her heart belongs to the man standing in the light, patiently watching them leave, and patiently awaiting their next return.

"Yes, I do."

Her son smiles and nods, then settles to sleep against Boomer's fur. Jess doesn't bother even pretending to know what they're talking about, silent and alert underneath the hood of her jacket. She clicks the truck's high-beams on. It rolls around the bend, onto the moonless dirt road.

Joseph disappears around the corner, but Ava knows right where to find him: in the light, where he's always stood, and where she's always run to.

-THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY finished. I just need to express my unending gratitude for those who gave kudos, commented, and read this entire thing or stopped by along the way. Hard to believe this was born from a filthy John smut-fic, lol. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the final two chapters. I will be going back and editing, as I'm never satisfied, but it shouldn't be anything major. -Graves


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